Filipe Correia, Owner 

Filipe Correia has been working at Mario’s Food Centre for most of his life. “I took over full time in 2001, but I started working in 1980, when I was twelve years old.” Nephew to the store’s namesake and original owner, Mario Marques, he started out stocking shelves and helping with various chores before beginning to help running the store’s operation in the 90s—while also adding his own passion project, a comic and collectible section called “The Final Stop”. 

The food centre, which offers a wide variety of imported Portuguese and Brazilian products and specialty foods, celebrated its 60-year anniversary in 2024; though the business started a few years earlier selling door-to-door to Ottawa’s Portuguese community out of a second-hand station wagon, the MacArthur storefront opened in 1964. More than half a century later, the store is still operating out of that same building, and Correia has no plans to leave Vanier. 

“We’re a very diverse community. We don’t just cater to only Portuguese or Brazilians, we have people from all sorts of backgrounds coming in who appreciate our food.” 

Get a taste of Portugal at 381 MacArthur!