SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - It's late Friday afternoon - the end of a long week marked by endless phone calls and repeated trips to the site of his latest venture, Nico's Market, and chef Pierre LePage is faced with perhaps the most vexing of all questions: should customers of his new store – set to open in the next two weeks – see melons or tomatoes when they first walk in?

Pierre LePage, owner of Le Frolic and Chef Pierre's Catering Service, stands in the front entranceway of his newest venture, Nico's Market, slated to open within the next two weeks. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

His spouse and general manager, Margaret Pawluk, notebook in hand, weighs in.

"Melons are kind of blah," she says. "You need something vibrant."

Judging by LePage's description of his market, located in the Centre Ice Plaza at the corner of Old Airport Road and Range Lake Road, vibrant is exactly what Yellowknifers are going to get.

Named after his step-granddaughter and measuring nearly 8,000 square feet, Nico's Market will boast four aisles of kitchen supplies, a 24-seat cafe, a 34-foot deli counter, pre-supplied catering goods like sausage rolls and quiches, hard to find cooking ingredients, a crab and lobster tank and a butcher shop.

"I think we need between 30 and 40 (people) here to cover seven days a week," said LePage.

Nico's has been festering in the chef's head for more than two years, but after some stops and starts and missed targets, the market – estimated last year to cost $1.5 million – is almost ready to open, with L'Heritage Restaurant also expected to reopen early next year, possibly in time for Valentine's Day. This time LePage will get his way: the lounge inside the restaurant will simply be called "Le."

"The first thing you're going to see is the produce – produce, produce, produce," LePage said of his store, speaking a mile a minute.

Compared to Le Stock Pot, which will shed all of its kitchen supplies and become a cafe of its own, the Nico cafe, which will include a coffee and cappuccino bar, will be "bigger."

"We'll have a full salad bar. We'll give you a box and you put whatever you want in there. It's gonna be a set price per 100 grams," said LePage

As for the deli: "We're going to do the old style where I don't pre-cut little pieces of cheese and label them. You want a piece of cheese? We cut it the size you want. Here, if you want a steak, you go talk to the butcher, he puts it in the butcher block and you tell him where you want the knife."

The idea is to build a relationship with those who serve you, said LePage.

"After a while, he probably has (your order) ready every Saturday when you come," he said of the butcher, whom he hasn't found yet. LePage is prepared to step in himself if necessary.

"If I have to run from the butcher shop to the cappuccino machine ... I will."

LePage's enthusiasm hardly conceals the fact that he's opening at possibly the worst time of the year for him – and we're not just talking break-up.

"It's the middle of my Christmas rush (for catering). I'm doing multiple events every day, trying to run the show here."

For now, he's just sweating the small stuff, which brings us back to the eternal question: melons or tomatoes?

"Oh, I have no idea. I think as long as it's colourful and tasteful. We should play around with it every month or every season. We're going to listen to what people want."