Boots and hoots

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Alan Shepard and Verna Judge, owners of Step'n Out Restaurant, live with love and laughter while spending long hours at their restaurant, which serves the rich and famous, among others. (MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ) Photo Store

Verna Judge and Alan Shepard, the lively couple who own and run Step'n Out restaurant at 157 Provencher Blvd., are clearly in love. They're together 24/7 -- and for much of that time, they are in the place that's been called "Winnipeg's most romantic restaurant."

And they are always laughing. So what happens in this place to keep them amused?

"Should we tell her about the lady who died? Well, there was the lady who hit the floor and died for a moment," Judge says. "I grabbed a doctor at a nearby table (the doctors from St. Boniface Hospital all eat here) and said, 'We need you over here, right now!' They got her back, but when she came to, she was looking straight up at a big angel on the wall." She thought she'd seen the Pearly Gates.

Adds Shepard: "And then, there was the big burly guy who told us he was going to ask his girlfriend to marry him at dinner and gave us the ring to do something with it. I made an ice sculpture with rose petals on it." Pregnant pause. "And when the guy saw it -- he started bawling!" blurts out Judge. We're not talking about sniffing here. "It's so much more beautiful than anything I could have done," he howled. Thankfully, his fiancée accepted the ring, between bursts of laughter.

"Another guy left an envelope on the table and I cleared the table and threw it in the garbage," Judge says. A while later, he came back through the door looking very upset and said, "Did you see an envelope on the table? It had $1,000 in cash in it for my rent." After a big, wet search through the garbage, they found the envelope, and off he went to pay his stinking rent.

It's been 14 years of laughter, hard work and long hours for the pair. For the first six years, their restaurant was at Bannatyne Avenue and King Street. They moved to Provencher eight years ago. They painted the new place a dark cerise and adopted an antique woman's boot as their logo. Thus began a new adventure, this time with a two-storey stand-alone building that grew a private patio on one side.

What's the thing they love most about this business? "The people," they say in unison.

"We love the people we have met in this place. They are just awesome," says Judge, who's an unstoppable hugger. Some loyal out-of-town customers will come straight from the airplane on a pit stop, get a hug and a visit, eat dinner and race back for their next plane. Repeat customers easily become friends at this restaurant that seats just 36 people.

"For instance, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson was here with her husband, John Ralston Saul," says Judge, pointing to the signed and framed photograph of the pair in formal dress. "And now John will come by on his own when he's passing through."

Signed pictures over 14 years include dancer Patrick Swayze, actor Robert Redford, jazz singers Holly Cole and Cassandra Wilson, actor Richard Gere and his wife, Carey Lowell, and Susan Sarandon, who also signed a videotape of Thelma and Louise (they sent staff out to find something to autograph while she was eating).

The appetizer, meal, dessert and wine is moderate to pricey (budget close to $30 for a nice entree), but lunches are less expensive, both inside and out on the delightfully private patio.

Every morsel of the food is cooked from scratch and several major items are changed every day on the menu, coming to you on a big framed blackboard shaped like a church window.

Alan is a particular chef, though he didn't get his skills from an academy with a screaming professor. In fact, he was running a Christmas store called Humbugs when he first met Verna and had no intention of cooking for a fancy restaurant.

He didn't have much choice, though, when the couple fired the chef the day before their restaurant opened because he refused to do everything fresh. That left no one to cook for opening night, so Alan, a natural chef, put on the apron and the hat -- et voila! He embraced the project with a menu that was extremely tasty and served with dramatic presentations.

About 50 per cent of the menu is celiac-friendly. "The Celiac Society posted us as celiac-friendly restaurant 10 years ago," Judge says.

"If people phone ahead, we will make substitutions to make more dishes available," Shepard adds.

Some of the dishes are old standards with a twist. "One of our customers said she would picket in the street if we took the steak off the menu!" Judge says. It's not just any old steak. Shepard takes three days to make its green peppercorn sauce. And the starters are to die for. My personal favourite of the nine appetizers is the artichoke and walnut velvet soup.

Then there's the dish Verna laughingly calls "the seafood facial." The seafood and rice arrive in a piece of crockery that looks like a Chinese cookie jar with chopsticks criss-crossed and poking out the top. When you pull off the lid, you get a face full of aromatic seafood steam. Everyone within three tables starts salivating. Too bad for them!

"When we opened, we heard that 80 per cent of restaurants close within two years, so we really pulled out the stops. In fact, we did the feng shui thing," says Judge -- a look that includes 650 antique boots people have brought to the couple as gifts of gratitude, affection and goodwill, along with live trees and orchids decorating the windowsills.

But one of the best features is Judge. She is nothing if not glamorous and risqué. One of her favourite lines?

"Oyster appetizers, perhaps? You can go home and work them off later."

Part of an occasional series on unique restaurants that provide another great reason to venture downtown once in a while.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 11, 2012 A1