Meet Trushar Patel, the owner of Rajun Cajun in Hyde Park Chicago. This family own restaurant is located at 1459 E 53rd St, Chicago, IL 60615. Trushar was born and raised in Kenya. He came to the United States in 1979.His Hyde Park restaurant, Rajun Cajun, is celebrating its 25thanniversary this month (December 2018). When he first arrived in the U.S., he started working at McDonald’s as a crew member, and worked his way up to supervisor before he decided to open his own restaurant. He and his family love Hyde Park, and they’ve now lived here for over 20 years. They love the mix of different cultures and nationalities in their customers and the community. His wife and son work at the restaurant with him every day and are the most important people in his life.
“I ended up in Hyde Park when I found a run-down chicken place in Hyde Park – the perfect location for my own restaurant! My years of food industry experience helped a great deal. We started cleaning the place up and started introducing Indian food slowly. It wasn’t easy offering Indian food on South Side of Chicago, but with lots of sampling people came to love our food, and we started attracting more and more customers. Our popularity increased when we started catering at the University of Chicago, and we now supply food for their five cafeterias.”
“I’m obviously most proud of my family, but on the business side, we’ve been working with a local design firm and have just redone our website, social media, signage, and menus. It’s now possible to order through the Rajun Cajun website without using an outside delivery service. We care very much about the quality of our food and being able to deliver the food directly to our customers makes a big difference to us. We can greet our customers and make sure they are happy with their orders.”