Correction. You cannot find refuge here. This place has closed. I leave the rest of this post here solely for its literary value.

La Haven is a sleek, friendly, straightforward café in the South Loop: on the west side of Michigan Ave, about half a block south of Roosevelt.

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Coffee and Wi-Fi in the South Loop

Hotspots-a-Go-Joe, edition XIII

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La Haven café serves top-end stuff: La Colombe coffee and pastries from Beurrage. In this regard – as well as in terms of ambiance – Haven feels like a laid back cousin of La Colombe – especially the one in the West Loop. However, at some point, they plan to serve sandwiches, (They’ve begun to serve a limited amount of food. 11/15/15) which will set them apart from all the Colombes. Until then, if you need to leave the Haven in search of a bite, we’ve got a few recommendations.

Haven’s a very good place to crack open your laptop. Sufficient power outlets along the walls, accessible to about half of the seating. The seating is ample, but made exclusively(They now have a couch. 11/15/15) of hard surfaces. You’ll feel happy about staying, but your pampered tush won’t want you to park it on those small wooden seats all day – and you really can’t complain about that, because after all, Haven is a café, not a public library. After a while, you’ll want to get your caffeinated ass out of that lovely café, haul it over to Grant Park, and wear down your laptop battery under the shade of a tree. This sort of outdoorsy thing is good for you, and you know it.

Know what else is good for you? A constant parade of really good doughnuts … which brings me to the reason I’m writing this post: this morning, I had the best doughnut of my life here at La Haven. That’s right: best of my life. My regular readers, as well as those who have seen me with my shirt off lately, know that I’m no pedestrian when it comes to doughnuts. If there were a Chicago Marathon of doughnuts, I’d be running in it and my finish time would be incredible. So when I say “best” and “of my life,” I mean hard-core business.

I’ve had plenty of delicious pastries at La Haven, but the vanilla glazed I had this morning was so tender and yielding that you could clearly sense it thanking you for biting into it. I swear to God, it bordered on being creamy. I hear it was fried in clarified butter. They tell me it came from Beurrage, in Pilsen.(They now get their doughnuts from Do-Rite. 11/15/15) I’m going to be checking that place out presently.

Other Stuff I’ve Had:

• Same doughnut, but with cinnamon-sugar instead of vanilla glaze. Same delicious doughnut, but the sugar’s grit provides a contrast to the creamy doughnut. Delicious, but I prefer the creamy-on-creamy action of the glazed.
• Salted Nutella Latte: just what it sounds like. Very rich. I’ve heard a lot of people drink it iced.
• Cinnamon Mocha Capp: the best cinnamon mocha capp I’ve ever had. Yes, I’ve had cinnamon mocha capp before. I’ve had so many capps over years, I can’t remember all of their names. But this one was special (and no, I don’t say that to all the capps). It was special because it wasn’t merely chocolate with a hint of cinnamon. It had a streak of cinnamon intensity. It wasn’t cute. It was powerful.

Haven’t staff is deliberately friendly. It’s the kind of place where the baristas make a point of knowing the regulars’ names. One of the baristas in particular has a habit of looking you right smack in the eyes and smiling like he means it, every time he interacts with you. I’m telling you, when he does this, you will melt. It’s like he looks right into your soul and offers it happiness. It’s absolutely heady and unarming. I tell you this as someone with polarized hull plating that is considered by many in this quadrant to be impregnable, so be forewarned.

La Haven

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We also recommend this La Haven review at Work From.

Credits for all images on this page: Make It Like a Man! Hover over images and/or green text for pop-up info. Click for more.

See my review at Zomato.

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