When Victor Syperek’s little flagship bar, The Economy Shoe Shop, rapidly got too big for its own britches, Victor and his partner Dave Henry, realized they needed a LOT more room to move.

As luck would have it, that room turned out to be, literally, next door. Languishing on Argyle St. just through a south-facing wall, was Cleve’s Sporting Goods Warehouse Outlet – and it was closing its doors for good. The 3000 square foot space was an unremarkable one as befit its bargain sports retail moniker; it sported a black and white checkerboard linoleum tile floor and a dropped T-bar ceiling, replete with fluorescent light boxes. It had pillars and posts… but not for long!

Work on the new space began in January of 1996 and quickly became the subject of much light-hearted speculation as Vic and Dave occasionally allowed the odd regular to peek in at the progress next door. Time-lapse photography would have revealed the stripping away of the floor and the ceiling and the very gradual addition of walls and risers. What eventually emerged, months later, was something no one in Halifax had ever seen. The old sporting goods space had been transformed into a bustling, bohemian restaurant that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Morocco… or Spain… or Italy. On further inspection, its design fit none of those places exactly but rather reflected Victor’s much-traveled impressions of an amalgam of them all.

The room’s textured walls and arched walls and heavy doors were married to exposed beams and rooted on a colourful broken mosaic tile floor. Vic’s theatre arts background in set design inspired “stone” and woodwork that gave the impression of a room with a vintage it simply didn’t have. At the back of the space, a previously problematic pillar had become the bar’s centerpiece. Now it is simply referred to as “the tree” as in, “I’ll meet you in The Backstage, near the tree.” Not content to have a simple painted column in the middle of his restaurant, Victor wrapped it in a fiberglass “trunk” and gathered branches from beech trees around Halifax, complete with leaves, to finish the illusion. The limbs were strung with lights. The effect is magical.

The Shoe Shop’s little café kitchen was expanded to serve the new restaurant’s various – and idiosyncratic – eating areas, some 250 new seats in all. The menu was designed to be affordable but memorable… the perfect place to come pre and post theatre! The theatre in question is The Neptune Theatre, the center of the arts for Halifax, an Argyle Street neighbour and a business very close to the hearts of Victor and Dave.

It seemed prophetic to call the new addition, The Backstage.

After the dinner hours, The Backstage is a beehive of social activity and certainly one of the places in the city to see and be seen – for those who care about such things. For most it’s just a great place to meet in an unparalleled atmosphere. The Backstage remains discreet but it’s pretty safe to say that if anyone, you know, famous ever made it to Halifax, they would probably come here…