It’s been an emotional week for Louis Muio.
On Tuesday, the Sault man was shocked to see a video on SooToday showing the removal of the iconic signs outside the former Muio’s restaurant. Now in his 70s, Muio worked at the landmark eatery for his father, Carmen, in his younger years.
“It was very, very sad to see that,” he says of the video clip. “I watched it and it was extremely emotional to the point where I had some tears. It was our family business. It was very difficult.”
However, his shock and sadness has been replaced by joy over the fact that the lettering of one of the two signs has been donated to the Sault Ste. Marie Museum for safekeeping and display — and the other one is being given to him.
Like the downtown restaurant itself, the story of the signs’ next chapter is pretty special. In fact, if the Sault Museum wasn’t right across the street, those familiar letters may have met a much worse fate.
“It was super coincidental,” says William Hollingshead, executive director of the Sault Ste. Marie Museum. On Tuesday afternoon, he just happened to notice the crew from Classic Signs in their boom truck across the road, preparing to take down the letters.
“I saw Classic Signs over there and asked: ‘What’s the plan with the sign?’”
That sign, of course, was among the most familiar in town for decades, welcoming customers to a beloved restaurant first opened in 1962 at the corner of Queen and East Streets by Louis Muio’s father, Carmen, and his Uncle Pat. His mother Dina, Aunt Flora and Uncle Guy ‘Chippy’ Muio worked there, too. The family previously owned and operated the Adanac Restaurant.
“During the summers I worked at Muio’s and my sister Maria worked there as a waitress,” Louis Muio recalled. “When I worked there I waited on the counter serving people. I made all the sodas, sundaes and milkshakes, took the dirty dishes out and brought the clean ones in. When we ran the restaurant we’d work and close at two in the morning, then we’d have to clean up and drive the staff home. They were long days.”
“Just so the staff didn’t think I was getting preferential treatment, my dad Carmen worked me harder than anybody,” he laughed.
When the Muio brothers eventually retired, longtime employee Rocco DiRenzo became the new owner. He retired in 1997, passing ownership to his son, Rob, who ran the restaurant until it closed down in August 2021 during the peak of the pandemic.
The building then sat empty for nearly two years, until SooToday broke the news last summer that a group of buyers had finally emerged: Brendan Yarema, Kyla Faganely and John Glavota. Eight months later, in February 2024, SooToday reported that two new tenants — Surendra Kumar Bansal and Oyunbileg Chuluunbazar — were planning to reopen the restaurant as Ojas, specializing in plant-based South Asian dishes.
With the grand opening tentatively scheduled for the end of the month, the time had come for the old sign to be changed. Kody Perin, the co-owner of Classic Signs Inc., was among the crew members who showed up on Tuesday afternoon.
“Will Hollingshead saw me there, talking to Kumar [Bansal] outside and he could see we were looking up at the signs,” Perin recalls. “He could see me measuring things so he ran across the road and said: ‘What's going on here?’ He said: ‘Are those signs coming down? What are the chances we can get hold of them?’ And I said: ‘The chances are very high.’”
Perin says he spoke to Bansal about the historical significance of the signage and recommended that he donate it to the museum for preservation.
“I said it would be a very, very wise idea to donate it to the museum so they could keep it,” Perin says. “I told the museum we’ll do our best to remove it safely and in fact we were successful in doing so. It was the restaurant, the people, the owners of Muio’s and that sign that made things so memorable for everyone.”
Hollingshead was thrilled.
“I asked if we could have it and they were very, very helpful in donating it and making sure they took it off nice and safe for us,” he says. “We want to restore it clean and put it on permanent display with something similar to the stars painted around the lettering. The stairwell might be a good location for it or the Skylight Gallery.”
Bansal told SooToday he appreciates how much the restaurant’s history — including the familiar signs — means to the people of Sault Ste. Marie.
“I had mixed feelings,” he says. “I want to have our sign there but from an iconic perspective I also wanted to keep the old sign there, but we’re happy the museum will take care of the sign. When you get this kind of privilege it also comes with lots of responsibilities. We are trying our best to keep the building’s reputation as it was in the past because it is an iconic address.”
After watching the video on SooToday, Louis Muio contacted our newsroom to try to find out more about what happened to the signs. He says it was “wonderful” to find out they had been donated to the museum.
“I was very pleased that the signs didn’t get destroyed and that one will be in a place where people will see it,” Muio said. “I called Will and he said: ‘We’re going to take one and clean it up and repaint it.’ I asked: ‘What are you going to do with the other one?’ I said: ‘How about I take one’ and he said: ‘Sure.’”
Muio, who describes himself as “very handy,” says he plans to restore the sign’s letters and mount them on a board in a private, safe place.
For him, driving past the shuttered home of his family’s former business the past two years has been tough. “It’s a sense of loss, it really is,” he says. “It’ll be difficult for me to go in. I keep driving by and wish I was younger and make it a family business again.”
He hopes the new tenants enjoy nothing but success with their new restaurant. The sign for Ojas — a Sanskrit term that means “vigour” — went up on Thursday.
“I wish them well,” Muio says, “because it’s way better to have a business that’s operating and surviving there rather than an empty building that’s going to decay and disappear.”