Heaven on Seven

This blog seems to be turning into a restaurant review site. I don’t care-deal with it.

For everybody’s birthday in my department—there are six of us, all women—we bring in treats to have in the morning and find a day to take the person out to lunch. This week was our assistant Chrestine’s birthday, and she chose Heaven on Seven, 600 N. Michigan Ave., which is Louisiana-style food.

Being that it’s right off Michigan Avenue, I thought it would be a tourist trap. Which is code for chain food and expensive prices. But it turned out to be kind of a hidden treasure.

It’s pretty dimly lit inside and decorated Mardi Gras style, with purple, gold and green beads and masks everywhere. Kelly circa 2002 would have instinctively went to lift her shirt for the swag (I let some guy look down my shirt in college to win a Mardi Gras banner-for real) but professional Kelly circa 2011 seemed to be able to control herself. Or realize that a Mardi Gras banner with a Miller Lite logo is not great décor in a bedroom.

Heaven on Seven also has a wall with probably 1,000 different bottles of hot sauce on shelves. It was pretty incredible and overwhelming for someone who just grabs what’s available to put on my egg white omelette from the ADA café (The grill cook, Alberto, for realsies makes the best omelette I’ve ever had. Three egg whites, spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese, if you please).

For starters, they bring out a plate of sweet pickles to the table. I did not imbibe, as I only like regular guy pickles. I ordered gumbo soup and orzolaya, which is jambalaya with orzo pasta. My biggest issue with these dishes involved the sausage in both, which is hard to get around with this style of food.

The gumbo was great; not red as I’ve had it before but brown and with a scoop of white rice on top. Superb. The orzolaya was good, minus the sausage. It also had shrimp and chicken so I got my protein in, but I spent a lot of time navigating around the sausage.

Here comes the best part.

Whenever my department goes out for lunch, we let the birthday girl choose a dessert and we all split it. Being ladies who are conscious of our figures, we only want a couple bites as a taste. Chrestine chose peanut butter pie, and I could smooch her for it. It. Was. Fucking. Amazing. Best best best peanut butter pie I’ve ever had. Get up and go to this restaurant right now and order it. Do it.

The end.