New owner adding Indian food at RJ’s Market

For years, RJ’s Market at 238 Wellington St. W. has been known for its choice of Italian pasta, meatballs, sausage and pizza as well as eastern European perogies and cabbage rolls.

As more newcomers from India are now choosing Sault Ste. Marie to be their new hometown, Khuram Aftab, RJ’s Market’s new owner and operator – himself a native of India – has diversified the business’s food options to include Indian cuisine.

Aftab, known to his regular customers as ‘Sam,’ has owned RJ’s Market since December 2021.

“We are continuing the same traditional items we had before, the fried chicken, the meat, everything – but we thought we should add something, and we are adding things step by step. We realized there are a lot of newcomers moving in who need Indian food,” Aftab told SooToday monday.

“When I come to the Sault I feel like I should start something, food for everybody, so that when immigrants come in it should be affordable food they can eat, with good flavour.”

Aftab and his staff operate a buffet-style display of Indian food for customers at RJs to take home and enjoy.

“We opened up our Indian food display on Saturday but there was too much snow for people to come in,” he said with a chuckle, reflecting on the whopping amount of overnight snow that left Saulites spending much of the day digging out of their driveways .

“On Sunday it was very good. A lot of people came in and we got some very good feedback.”

A number of customers could be seen at RJs’ on Monday, purchasing food and asking questions about the new-to-the-Sault cuisine.

Aftab said that so far, Indian favorites at RJ’s include butter chicken, beef curry, chicken curry and chana masala.