The Historic Florida Restaurant Where You Can Grab A Bite Alongside A Rooster Cemetery

From a certain point of view, any restaurant that serves chicken is a kind of rooster cemetery. (The chicken we eat can come from either roosters or hens, after all — although roosters have been known to cause some chicken shortages.) But Blue Heaven, a historic restaurant in Key West, Florida, takes it quite literally. Adjacent to the restaurant, in a small courtyard, is a burial ground for roosters — including roosters which were used for cockfights. Thankfully, this barbaric sport is now illegal in the United States, but the graveyard remains.

Blue Heaven, which was opened in 1992, is located in a building that was once used as a bordello, a tavern, and a pool hall, which also hosted cockfights and regular, human fights. If these sound like seedy locations straight out of an Ernest Hemingway novel, there's a good reason for that: Hemingway himself lived near the area, and in fact once officiated a boxing match held in the pool hall. 

Blue Heaven is located just around the corner from the Hemingway Home and Museum, where the great writer lived for eight years. Some of Hemingway's famous six-toed cats often visit the restaurant, along with free-roaming roosters. When these animals aren't getting into scraps with each other, they're trying to mooch scraps from unsuspecting diners.

Blue Heaven certainly looks like a restaurant in the Florida Keys. The décor is bright, balmy, and just the right amount of kitschy, with outdoor tables set up beneath tropical tree branches and an assortment of conversation pieces for your viewing pleasure. (Our personal favorite is the outdoor shower with a wooden sign advertising "Showers: $1, To Watch: $2.") If you're worried about the heat of the Florida sun, don't worry too much — a sail mounted between two trees is there to provide some welcome shade.

But how's the food? We're glad you asked. The menu is varied and agreeable, offering classic favorites interspersed with some house specialties. At breakfast, dishes like pancakes and omelets can be accompanied by homemade banana bread. For dinner, you're offered a smattering of seafood dishes, including Caribbean BBQ shrimp and sautéed yellowtail snapper, as well as land-based meals like pork tenderloin or Jamaican jerk chicken. (Just be sure you don't let the roosters see you eating that last one.) And to top it all off for dessert, Blue Heaven is famous for — what else? — key lime pie. Maybe if the Florida Senate had tried some, they'd have made key lime pie the state dessert rather than strawberry shortcake.