Locus pocus Culinary couple have been all over the map, but ‘family’ of loyal clientele always tracks them down By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CST Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026

A fair number of businesses in the city are partly named for their street location. Sargent Blue Jeans. Pembina Insurance Services. Corydon Cycle & Sports.

What happens, then, if the roadway highlighted on your business sign suddenly goes “poof,” causing customers to scratch their head while they drive around in circles, trying to find you?

That was the predicament friends Lee Finch and Nicole Fanshaw found themselves in seven years ago when DeVries Avenue, the thoroughfare that led to their restaurant Lee’s on DeVries, was permanently barricaded east of Henderson Highway to pave the way for a new housing development.

“It was a huge headache, especially because there’s a DeVries Avenue that runs parallel to Lagimodière Boulevard, so when people were Googling us, it was taking them over there,” says Finch, seated next to Fanshaw inside what is now called Lee’s Restaurant, a homey, open-to-the-general-public diner that since 2007 has operated out of the Royal Canadian Legion’s East St. Paul branch.

“There were even times when Skip (the Dishes) drivers would be trudging through the ditch from the (north) Perimeter (Highway), because they couldn’t figure out how to get here,” Fanshaw adds with an eye roll.

They continued to go by Lee’s on DeVries for another year, mostly because it sounded better than Lee’s on Maxwell King Road, which became their new address, Finch says. But no, he adds, it certainly wasn’t the sort of problem they expected to encounter almost 20 years ago, when they were tossing around names for their yet-to-open venture.

Fanshaw and Finch have both spent their entire working lives in the hospitality biz. Fanshaw, who grew up near Oakbank, was 14 years old when she was hired as a server at Elmhurst Golf & Country Club in the RM of Springfield. Finch, originally from North Kildonan, was 15 when he landed a summer job slinging fries and hot dogs at Skinner’s Highway 44 location in Lockport.

The pair met in 1999 when Finch, a father of three who earned his Red Seal accreditation while cooking at the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, joined Fanshaw at Elmhurst, where she had graduated to food-and-beverage manager after completing Red River College Polytechnic’s hotel-and-restaurant management course.

Finch left Elmhurst in the fall of 2006 to take over as head chef at a breakfast-and-lunch nook tucked inside Royal Canadian Legion Branch 215. He eventually convinced Fanshaw to follow him there, and to go with him again 10 months later when their boss vacated that premises in favour of an existing restaurant at Shooter’s Family Golf Centre on Main Street. They quickly regretted the move — “It turned out the last place we wanted to be was at another golf course,” Fanshaw remarks — and within two months, upon learning the legion space was still available, they made the decision to strike out on their own.

“The plan when we started was that Nicole would be front of the house and I’d be back of the house, with both of us doing what we did best,” Finch says.

“We were pretty sure that if we combined those two forces, we would create the perfect restaurant storm.”

Since the get-go, Lee’s Restaurant, which is open for breakfast and lunch seven days a week, and for dinner on Fridays, has offered what Finch refers to as his greatest hits — no-nonsense dishes he conjured “probably a million times” before having a place of his own. Those include, according to online reviews, one of the city’s premier Reuben sandwiches as well as “top-shelf” burgers. Not that their loyal clientele, more than half of whom are non-legion members, always sticks to the printed menu.

Fanshaw laughs, listing a whack of commonly-placed orders their staff of 22 have nicknamed for specific individuals. First there’s the “Wally,” which during the week means oatmeal and toast, before switching over to bacon, toast and a half-order of hashbrowns on Saturdays and Sundays. Another is the “Jim,” which is eggs sunny-side-up, off-the-bone ham and gluten-free toast.

“Then there’s Bill, who likes basted eggs on three slices of toast, with a slice of cheese on each piece of toast,” Finch chimes in. “I have to cook them one egg at a time — I can’t do them all under one lid, they have to be done separately — which isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’ve got 100 other people waiting for their breakfast.”

The most unique? That has to be a fellow who grew up with a parent who wasn’t exactly the second coming of Julia Child. The way the customer told them the story, his mother routinely burnt everything to a crisp, so to this day he wants the meal in front of him to be as black as coal.

Oh, and don’t get them started when it comes to where regulars, who make the trip from as far away as Steinbach and Selkirk, look to park their derrières, each and every time they arrive. (Seating capacity in the restaurant, the walls of which are decorated with blown-up portraits of Hollywood legends Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, is only 24, but that increases to over 160 when they factor in the legion’s adjacent main-floor hall, which they’re permitted to utilize on a daily basis.)

It really is like the Norm Peterson character in the TV sitcom Cheers, who panics if his usual bar stool is occupied, Fanshaw says. For example, every Saturday like clockwork, the first party through the door at 7 a.m. makes a beeline for Table 12. It’s even reached the point where if there’s going to be a scheduled banquet or function in the legion hall, they text folks at least a week ahead of time, to remind them that “their” table won’t be available on such-and-such a date.

Finch, who estimates that they go through 1,000 pounds of potatoes and 14 cases of eggs — at 15 dozen eggs per case — every week, says one of the joys of being in business for almost two decades is that they’ve had the opportunity to watch customers’ children grow up before their very eyes. Conversely, there are cherished regulars they’ve lost, whose loved ones have gone out of their way to share the bad news with them. Many times in those situations, the family has even enlisted them to cater the funeral. Just last week, a late woman’s daughter told Fanshaw she never considered going anywhere else in that regard, knowing her mother Lois would have wanted Lee’s to handle the job.

“You know that Olive Garden slogan, the one that goes ‘when you’re here you’re family?’” Finch asks. “Those are just words, but here it’s the truth. Not only do we know the majority of people who come through the door by their first name, we’re friends with a ton of them, too. We’ve been to their homes, they’ve been to ours… Heck, we’ve even travelled with some, which I doubt too many other restaurants in the city can say.”

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