Maryjo Testa is among the first from the GLBT community to claim a stake in San Diego’s growing East Village, with the opening of her new storefront, Salad Style. She joins the ranks of other businesses shaping the area, such as the hyper-hip Café Chloe, a sleek wine-storage bar called 57 Degrees and an adjoining clothing store for young men called Commissary.

Since opening Salad Style on F and Eighth streets in June, she says the neighborhood has been changing daily.

“It’s becoming very diverse here,” she says. “There are condos going up right and left. This space came to me as a great deal that I couldn’t pass up.”

A familiar face at the Hillcrest Farmer’s Market, Testa now quenches the appetites of consumers traversing the East Village as they walk in for spunky salads doctored with shrimp, peppered skirt steak, marinated olives, dried cherries, enoki mushrooms and more. She also delivers up to 50 salads a day during the week to downtown offices. And with advance notice, she caters to most areas in metro San Diego.

“I’ve always eaten salads,” she says. “They’re a main staple in my diet. I can’t live without them.”

Nestled in a quaint row of brick storefronts, her new 650-square-foot space includes a few tables and a large preparation kitchen where organic greens rule the day.

“We provide high-quality ingredients that meet the nutritional needs to restore your body,” she adds.

In her Cobb Salad, for instance, she replaces the nutritionally vapid iceberg lettuce with baby spinach. “It isn’t very classic, but it’s popular. Instead of blue cheese, we use goat cheese along with a homemade, whole-grain mustard vinaigrette.”

For the seared Ahi Tuna Salad, the fish is fanned out over arugula and organic greens, along with heirloom tomatoes. And the Moroccan Cous Cous Salad, which she says has been a “huge hit since day one,” sports a blend of exotic spices and black currants used in boiling the cous cous, which is then assembled on a bed of greens with asparagus, feta cheese and toasted almonds. The creation is finished off with fresh-squeezed lemon vinaigrette.

Testa affirms that both herbivores and their meat-eating counterparts take delight in the fiber-rich Totally Vegan Salad tossed with quinoa, chick peas, carrots, tofu and sunflower sprouts. Drizzled with miso dressing, “It’s super yummy and we get a lot of compliments on it,” she adds.

About a dozen different salads round out the menu, with prices ranging from $6.50 to $10.50 for Testa’s signature Chicken Caesar made with yellow corn, hearts of palm and Cotija cheese. “These are serious, meal-size salads, all put into 24-ounce, plastic serving containers.”

Testa, who is also involved in fund-raising for the Momentum on the Midway (an event to help gays and lesbians challenge the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy) will show off a few of her salads bright and early for NBC Channel 7/39’s morning show at 6:45 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 14. A veteran of the food industry, she was a chef at Prego in the early ’90s, traveled and cooked throughout Europe, and worked as executive chef for Laurel before launching the catering phase of Salad Style in 2004.

“This is a fun business,” she says. “When it comes to food, you want to narrow yourself down to a niche because you can have a better handle on quality and consistency. A lot of restaurants fail to do that.”

Salad Style is open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. It is located at 807 F St. For downtown deliveries and catering orders, call (619) 255-6731.