Surati Sweet Mart

While you might recognize the bright red Surati logo from snack aisles across the city, the Scarborough retail location offers the direct line to the Sheth family’s vast inventory of Gujarati specialties. The business originally formed in Uganda in the 1940s, but after the family arrived in Canada as refugees, they restarted the operation in a Toronto kitchen in 1981. Today, that home-based effort has expanded into a massive manufacturing and retail presence, though the focus remains on traditional vegetarian recipes. The store functions as a comprehensive depot for stocking up. Aisles are packed with bags of farsan – savory, crunchy snacks and trail mixes – ranging from simple salted items to complex, spicy blends. You will find the shelves lined with everything from pre-packaged cookies and rusks to frozen vegetables and flatbreads. The bakery section is notable for being entirely eggless, producing biscuits and fruit cakes that adhere to strict dietary customs. At the counters, the focus shifts to fresh mithai. Trays of milk-based sweets and syrup-soaked jalebi sit behind the glass, drawing regulars who come to assemble boxes for gifts or home consumption. The pace here picks up significantly around major holidays, when the catering orders pile up and the queue for fresh sweets extends through the shop floor.