Shouldn’t Food Taste as Good as It Looks?

There are lots of people who swear by Seventh Heaven--I regularly see the tiny Santa Monica place crowded with people eating elegant breakfasts and splendid little lunches at the counter. But no such happy folk were with me when I tasted this glorious looking food. Not once, but twice, dinner turned into a whine tasting within the first few bites.

This is food as sign, food as class indicator, and take-out as consumer event. Indeed, the looks, the abundance, the studied casual presentation--platters of exotic pastas, great baskets of midnight dark bread and great piles of chicken salad that would look right at home in Matisse’s North African work--make you semiotically “read” the shop as a place where food has not only been prepared but conceived. The dishes are named as precisely as if they were created for a 16th-Century Pope ( “radiatore with puree of peppers and Taleggio”). Now it’s true, you can get a really good sandwich here, but the prime hunger they’re feeding is Urban Aesthetic not Cro-Magnonesque.

Food as class indicator? Close your eyes and you might be eating in Italy, read the prices and you know you’re not shopping at Ralphs. Take that radiatore (please). I had to try that sludgy pasta mass twice to make sure I hadn’t missed some subtlety. There’s a truly stellar raisin pumpernickel bread (the kind you’d find on Fairfax), but in this context of California pizzas (excellent and generously endowed with numerous “serious toppings” by the way) and jars of Devonshire cream, it takes on a different guise. (Is it really better smeared with French butter made from the milk of cows who eat mache? )

There are lustrous slices of first-rate poached salmon, for people who don’t blink at spending $11.50 per piece, and a curried chicken salad with mango chutney and almonds and currants that could make any tired workaholic imagine they were the Kublai Khan.

Even if you can afford the gnocchi at $10.50 a pound, I’d skip it--too rubbery. Spinach tortellini with feta was execrable. The grilled chicken salad with baby vegetables, garlic and hazelnut oil is soothing at $10.50 per pound. A homemade spicy turkey sausage, a red-skinned, red-onion potato salad and a garlic-chili squid affair are all pleasant enough (but didn’t taste as good as they looked), while the herbs in a blazing yellow pepper ratatouille added a sorry raw taste.

The alluring chock-full cases at Seventh Heaven change every day and, regardless of the results, the quality of the raw materials is always unimpeachable. (The owner of Seventh Heaven also owns Divine Prime, a first-class fish, chicken and meat shop two doors away.) If the variety of chicken doesn’t please you on a given day (we tasted a delicate rosemary lemon, a slick Texas barbecue and an unexciting corn flake-crusted Louisiana baked chicken, all $5.50 per pound), step into Divine Prime for the crusty, juicy rotisseried birds to go. (At a dollar less per pound, too.)

There are usually two pleasing homemade soups per day. I particularly like the simple stock-infused asparagus puree. The corn bread casserole was exceedingly sweet and slathered with sour cream.

Seventh Heaven, 710 Montana Ave . , Santa Monica. (213) 451-0077. Open daily 7 a.m. - 7 p.m. (until 8 p.m. on weeknights). MasterCard and Visa. Street parking and parking lot behind store.