Ritual Salad & Apothecary Found a Welcoming Location in Lakeside
By Tamara Jensen
Beyond the shelves filled with artwork, crystals and tarot decks, and stack of books with titles like, Women’s Psychic Lives, Rune Power and The Circle is Sacred, Cori Zastera stood behind the restaurant counter and chopped red pepper.
At 2:30 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, the lunch rush was far from over at Ritual Salad & Apothecary. When Zastera finally caught a break at almost three, she used the time to bus tables and ask customers if they enjoyed their meal
Now she was back behind the counter preparing the next day’s vegetables – everything at the restaurant that specializes in salads, soups, bowls and baked goods is prepped fresh for the next day. The restaurant keeps just one double-door fridge and one single-door fridge to prevent waste.
“We make everything from scratch,” Zastera said. “Literally everything, down to the croutons.”
Baked goods like pumpkin spiced latte cheesecake, double chocolate fudge brownie and a cranberry thumbprint cookie fill a case in front of the cash register. The desserts go well with a variety of salads, all offering homemade dressings, various proteins and ingredients. You can also enjoy a sourdough “Sam-witch” or soup.
Zastera keeps her food peanut-free and tree-nut free. She uses as many organic ingredients as possible while staying cost-effective, including all-organic broth for her soups. Many items are marked as vegan, while Zastera describes the restaurant itself as omnivore, with protein options such as chicken and one salad featuring farm-raised bacon bits (“it is the Midwest, after all,” reads the large menu above the counter). Everything is gluten-free but the sourdough.
Ever since moving to 4501 East Superior Street in the Lakeside neighborhood July 11 from its first location in Lincoln Park, Ritual Salad has seen its business triple.
“When Lakeside said they needed a restaurant, they definitely showed up,” Zastera said. “They show up every single day for us.”
Ritual Salad went from a 5-seat restaurant to a 31-seat restaurant — that’s before patio seating – where Zastera said a line often forms out the door at lunchtime.
Zastera opened that first Lincoln Park restaurant in April 2024. It was her first business, having worked as a nurse up until that year. She was “proudly fired” from an unnamed assisted living facility for calling out med errors, she said. Like so many other people who exited the medical field in the last five years, she was burned out.
“I said to the universe while I was running my dog, ‘if I’m not a nurse, what am I?’” she said. “And I said that multiple times.”
Zastera dreamed about opening her restaurant – she becomes emotional reflecting on those days, now – staying up late at night with her best friend and now coworker, Lindsey Sella, dreaming up the details and making dressings. She returned to restaurant work, having realized she missed working in restaurants when the job loss was still fresh and her husband took her out to eat to cheer her up.
Zastera went to the Entrepreneur Fund. She built a business plan. In Ritual Salad’s early days, she continued working evenings at Texas Roadhouse, “so I could afford my own life.”
The restaurant made $250,000 last year, almost entirely from to-go orders, she said. And she beamed, “we did not go into the red.”
Later, the owner of the new Lakeside location’s building offered to complete a “buildout” just for Ritual Salad
The restaurant gained storage space. It now has two kitchens. And this year, Zastera estimates the restaurant will make close to a quarter million dollars.
The herbs for teas, tools for spells and celestial décor cannot be missed, and they’re not supposed to be. The restaurant’s soups are served from cauldrons. Some of the “Seven Deadly Salads” are named, Harvest Moon, Spellbound Sesame Ginger and Spring Solstice.
“I’m Pagan,” Zastera said. “I’ve been Pagan for 20 years.”
Before a follow-up question could be asked she continued that Pagans worship the earth. No deities.
“Not a devil worshipper.”
Zastera does love fall and would live in “perpetual autumn” if she could. She has received no backlash for her restaurant’s witchy vibes – well, nearly no backlash.
“Only one lady tried to renounce Satan from me,” she said.
While steady in her beliefs, Zastera keeps a sense of humor, at some point jokingly saying about astrology, “mercury’s in the microwave!” to her employees.
Even the “little old ladies” who hold vastly different belief systems than Zastera walk through Ritual Salad’s doors, she said.
The apothecary side of the business also includes “a few things for smudging,” though Zastera won’t sell white sage as she is not Indigenous. For cleansing, she instead sells blue sage, yerba or cinnamon sticks, the latter of which she recommends for washing your front door with on the first of every month.
Zastera loves and interacts with her customers. As this particular Wednesday became late afternoon, she recommended a wine the restaurant sells to two customers who decided to extend their lunch chat, then gave them another quick rundown of her story and restaurant history.
She also loves her team, pausing from food prep to tend to her employees and updating employees just starting their shifts of new equipment and layout changes. She takes measures to save on food costs so she can put more into labor and wages, she said.
“The universe provided me with the most amazing people to run this business,” she said. “I do not do this alone. It is definitely a village.”
With so much going on, Zastera is still looking to a busy future. In December she started offering dinner service, with two dinner specials per night, along with the beer and wine she already sells.
Then there’s Ritual Marketplace, which opened in Superior on December 7 at the old Red Mug Coffee location, at Hammond Avenue and Broadway Street, currently home to tenants like The Spirit Room and Yes, Cheese. Zastera described it as, “a really cool collaboration of women going after their dreams.”
The collaboration will feature new vendors and others familiar to Ritual Salad: Cryptic Veil Oddities Studio & Gallery will sell artwork, and oddities like bugs and bones, Crow & Co. To Go will sell books, This Nifty Scene will sell vintage wool, Nickie Dean will sell baked goods and a coffee shop that’s not yet ready to be disclosed will return to the location. Helmi Grimm will also provide “living walls,” with walls decorated with art pieces that are all for sale.
After Ritual Marketplace’s grand opening on December 7, the business will be open Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, with local band Similar Dogs playing a residency there Sundays, and the business has already received a spot for the 2026 Homegrown Music festival next spring.
As Zastera bustles around Ritual Salad, one quote printed on the table’s menus from the Disney movie Halloweentown may just sum up her story the best: “Magic is really very simple. All you’ve got to do is want something and then simply let yourself have it.”
Ritual Salad is open Monday to Friday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Hours may be expanded after dinner service is added, Zastera said.
Tamara Jansen is a Duluth-based communications professional and freelance writer.
PULL QUOTES
“When Lakeside said they needed a restaurant, they definitely showed up. They show up every single day for us.” – Cori Zastera – owner, ritual salad & apothecary
