I first spotted the 11th Street Diner along Washington Street back in 2019, during my second visit to South Beach, and I’ve been meaning to try to see it lit up at night. Since that visit, they’ve added the 11th St sign to it, but regardless it looks so pretty!

For our last night in South Beach, we decided to take it easy. M wanted to go to The Deuce as he had been too busy to go so far during our stay, and so I suggested South Beach Brewing Company Taproom down by 11th Street. The food and vibe looked nice and relaxed, and I had tried their blood orange IPA at Yardbird the day before and really liked it.

We hit a snag in that the address for the taproom in Uber is not what it should be, and we were brought to a hostel 20 minutes away. If you’re planning on taking a rideshare, don’t go by the name but the specific address instead.

M is a huge smoked fish dip fan and we’ve tried a few around South Florida, and this one is a solid contender. They get it shipped from Key Largo every other day, and with some crusty bread and some celery, it’s a delightful snack with some local beers. The sandwiches were also good--the sauce for the meatballs is made in part with their blood orange IPA, and the bier cheese (a suggestion from our bartender) is made with Hatch chiles and had a nice kick to it.

Usually, whenever I am in South Beach, I’ll make at least one pilgrimage to Sweet Liberty Drinks & Supply to see what their creative minds are up to, but on this trip it was so close to us (I had honestly forgotten how close it is to The Gates) that we were there nearly every day of our stay.

They have an excellent happy hour from 4-8PM, and so between my husband and I we tried a few of those drinks like the sangria and the spicy coconut margarita, as well as some of the other concoctions on the menu. The tropical negroni, complete with mango vinegar, was a particular favorite, and I love that their take on the classic martini, The Spaniard, not only comes with bleu cheese-stuffed olives, but also a little side of Marcona almonds.  Their drinks are legendary, but I’m also a huge fan of their snacks and small plates: I’ve loved the Caviar Dip so much I made my own version at home, and this time the pickled eggs and shishito peppers were welcome new additions to the menu since our last visit in 2022.

Some more favorites along Collins (with a quick detour to walk past the Deuce).

(screencap from Scarface from here)

Despite my love of Miami Beach and the amazing Art Deco architecture along Ocean Drive, I never watched Scarface until recently when my husband had it on one Saturday afternoon. He called me in to show me the shots of Ocean drive that would lead to one of the most gruesome sequences in a graphic AF film: the chainsaw scene that takes place on Ocean Drive. Most of the film was not shot in Miami Beach, but the exterior/establishing scenes along Ocean Drive could not be replicated by any set for a film that was meant to be taken seriously, and I was struck by the beauty of the Colony Hotel sign right next door to where the very gory massacre scene happens. 

While I’m not a big Scarface fan, I love any opportunity to appreciate more Art Deco awesomeness, and while in retrospect I realize that I was probably right by this hotel five years ago during a joint-bachelor party, I was not in the frame of mind to photograph it then (nor did I have the equipment to capture it properly, especially after some tequila sodas). 

The hotel that served as the location for the massacre still stands, though it is a CVS now; one of the things that I will always love Miami Beach for is its tenacity in preserving these buildings so that even if they don’t look a certain way from a 40-year-old movie, they are still recognizable and have the same structure as they did when they were first built.

(a slightly recreated dialogue)

Me watching the opening shots of Ocean Drive from the chainsaw scene from Scarface for the first time* a few months ago: oh shit I don’t think I’ve been down to that part of Ocean Drive!

Husband: No--isn’t it right by Palace? We saw that hotel! I know we did!

Me: No, that’s Congress Hotel, and it has a totally different typeface. And name.

*I’m a GoodFellas/Casino girlie--and in all fairness, this seems to be one of the only sequences shot with some scenes on location. You can’t fake South Beach and Lummus Park.

Saying hello to some of my favorite Ocean Drive properties!

I’m a little bummed that traffic has been slightly opened up again to traffic after a few years of pandemic-influenced closures, but I do understand that driving on Ocean Drive is part of the charm of Miami Beach and they’ve still kept it one-way, so it’s not nearly as intrusive as it was trying to navigate Ocean Drive back in 2019. 

I’m more feeling lucky I got to see so much of this street without any cars on it for as long as I did.

OLA now handles most of the food in the hotel, from the pool bar to the lobby bar as well as their main restaurant, and while the food is more expensive than it was the last time I was here, it is better. Having those daily food/beverage allowances definitely helped too.

Take, for instance, the salmon poke quinoa bowl I enjoyed after a nice, long swim on Monday morning, and it was just what I wanted: the salmon was delicious and the mix of fruit and vegetables were satisfying while being light, which is just what I wanted. I’m so glad I went to the actual pool bar to have this bowl, as it would stay closed for the rest of our stay for reasons I don’t know. The lobby bar was open instead, however, and I enjoyed their tuna tartare on Wednesday before I went out to venture to the Art Deco Historic District down on Ocean Drive. 

I also wanted to note that The Gates has one of the nicest hotel lobbies I’ve seen that isn’t a super high-end or explicitly historic space (and this is in the new tower, so presumably it’s not historic, but I’m not completely sure). I love the high ceilings, and I dig the vibe that the photography from a local artist conveys.

The Gates South Beach - DoubleTree is a lovely hotel that was originally an Aloft that was carefully built around the bones of the mid-century modern Ankara Motel. Located between 23rd and 24th Streets along Collins Avenue, I love how many of the original details are still in place, from the pool deck to the outdoor balconies that you can see along the first couple of floors. The gate house is now home to OLA, a restaurant that was displaced after a hurricane and has floated around to a few places since 2017. When we stayed at The Gates five years ago, OLA was in a nearby building next to a gas station; it was only months away from taking its permanent home in the hotel.

(More on that later.)

The one thing about the hotel that’s distinctly different is that there’s an office building next to the tower part of the hotel, home to, among other businesses, some sort of private equity company because we could see the Bloomberg terminals from our room windows. While there were plants that helped obscure some of the view between the buildings, mindfulness was still the watchword we had to follow to make sure no one could see anything inopportune.

More views of hotels being renovated on Collins, and then a quick little sojourn to the beach.

While walking back to the hotel, I took a stroll through the Lincoln Mall Road and came across this lovely art installation called PRIDE247 that you can experience through the end of June. Created by local artists Laz Ojalde and Natalie Zlamalova, who are known as AMLgMATD, they have reimagined the Pride flag in a way that envelops those that pass through the main part of the installation with the bright colors of the rainbow. On a windy day you can hear the straps of the flags flap in a calming way, and in light of all of the anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment that seems to be brewing these days, it’s a really lovely piece of public art.

Scenes from a late-afternoon stroll of Lincoln Road, Miami Beach.

Yardbird is one of my go-to lunch spots in South Beach for their small plates, and one thing I always have to get are their deviled eggs with trout roe. I’ve never had their cheddar grits, and I was told that they served their grits almost like mashed potatoes. They were definitely very fluffy, and I really liked them, but I just wish they had a little more cheddar.

Española Way in South Beach: a really pretty little pedestrian street lined with restaurants, but to be honest the first block of them are a bit…touristy. There’s a lovely crepe place that I wasn’t quite in the mood for at that point, and I really wished that Tropezon next door (the only way to find it is to spot this raccoon sign over the door) was open, but they don’t open until 5.

Took a nice long walk on Tuesday afternoon, starting with a trek into the heart of South Beach along Collins Avenue.

One thing I love about Miami Beach is how they are so focused on preservation of the Art Deco buildings that they have, so you’ll often see at least a few under renovation at any given time. The Raleigh--Anthony Bourdain’s favorite Miami hotel--has been under renovations for a few years now, but the progress looks promising. The Delano South Beach has been closed since 2020 but is also under renovations with plans to reopen in the near future.

Had to say hello to The Gale and one of my favorite neon signs on Collins--the San Juan Hotel sign--and while making my way westward, I happened to spot this really cool Anchor Hotel sign in the parking garage attached to the Anchor Shops on 16th and Collins. I tried to find a little more information on this building, but only the parking garage portion seems to be accessible these days and there’s very little online save for I imagine is the architect’s page dedicated to the project. From what I can gather, the Anchor Hotel was on Washington Street and had little portholes on its facade--you can see it in this photo, just look for the UHaul--and the hotel was demolished for this project but the sign was preserved.

This was from my first visit to Union Beer Store on Calle Ocho back in October of 2021.

My husband and I stopped in because I had read that it was a solid beer bar, and it was probably not long after they opened for the day so it was pretty quiet. It reminded me in a way of my beloved Max’s Taphouse here in Baltimore, only at a smaller scale: the people who ran it were passionate about craft beer and would rotate their kegs out frequently in addition to keeping fridges fully stocked with bottles and cans. Everyone behind the bar was friendly, and they had a whole bookshelf of board games you were free to play while you were there.

The team was also really into wrestling, so one of the TVs would constantly be playing an old Wrestlemania, the kind you’d see advertised on cable pay-per-view back in the 90s, and they had various wrestling action figures all around the bar. While I’m not the biggest wrestling fan, seeing old pop culture figures of the day pop up in the events was always a hoot, and I definitely have a better appreciation for the sport after watching Glow.

Since that visit, we’ve come here every time we’re on Calle Ocho--usually in the afternoon, but we came here one evening after visiting Cafe La Trova---and sadly, our visit two Sundays ago will be our last because Union is closing this month. If you’re in Miami, check their IG (linked above) for info on what days they will still be open, and I really really hope they’re able to bring this place to somewhere else in town, because otherwise the Magic City is a little less so with this closure.

Ball & Chain remains one of my favorite places in Little Havana to sit at the bar and listen to live music, though I’m bummed that they changed their happy hour from an all-day affair to being during the week from 4-7 with a two-for-one deal. Their cocktails are still great, and we sampled a few while we hung out here, as well as diving into this absolutely epic ceviche that was a LOT different from what we had back in 2019.

That said, the shrimp were well-cooked, and the ceviche itself was very refreshing. I wasn’t dying for the amount of food we had, but it was good and refreshing, and the drinks continue to be really tasty, if largely on the sweet side. 

I tried to recreate a photo I saw in the club that captured both the club and the Tower Theater in the same shot, and following multiple attempts with both my camera and phone, this was my best result.