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The magic of Miami is that “you’ll be able to nonetheless uncover locations,” mentioned the author and producer Eric Newman. “It doesn’t really feel like individuals have a chip on their shoulder. There’s a wholesome civic satisfaction and gratitude.”
Mr. Newman, who created the Netflix present “Narcos” and produced “Griselda,” starring Sofia Vergara, has, through the years, spent months at a time on location in Miami. To Mr. Newman, a California native, the attraction of this southern Florida playground isn’t simply what it’s — it’s additionally what it’s not. “There’s an appreciation in Miami that you just don’t see elsewhere,” he mentioned. “Maybe it’s as a result of lots of people right here got here from elsewhere. Maybe you got here to flee East Coast winters, otherwise you got here to flee Castro, otherwise you got here to flee taxes. People in Miami are genuinely completely happy to be right here.”
Mr. Newman, 53, produced the Academy Award-winning film “Children of Men” and, extra just lately, was the manager producer of “Painkiller” and “Narcos: Mexico.” He favors a facet of Miami not simply present in guidebooks. An after-hours salsa membership, a Xanadu hiding in plain sight, the very best Cuban sandwich round: These are the secrets and techniques that Miami has slowly revealed to him.
“The variety of Miami makes it really feel just like the least American metropolis, which is sort of what makes it extremely American,” Mr. Newman mentioned. “It feels splendidly overseas and but uniquely American.”
Here, his 5 favourite spots within the metropolis.
“La Trova is a present,” defined Mr. Newman. “The waiters are all immaculately dressed, they dance. You can inform that working there’s a profession, not a job.”
La Trova, owned by the grasp bartender Julio Cabrera and the chef Michelle Bernstein, is beloved for its impeccable drinks and its theatricality. Although the institution, in the course of Little Havana, has a sturdy menu that leans closely towards empanadas, croquetas and Cuban fare, the specialties are mojitos and different cocktails — made with all of the flare of efficiency artwork. (La Trova was a James Beard semifinalist for its “Outstanding Bar Program” in 2022.) The décor, just like the uniforms, is deliberate — an extended bar lined with crimson barstools, low lighting and a powerful wall of spirits.
“You really feel like you might be in Havana in 1958. It jogs my memory of ‘The Godfather Part II,’” mentioned the showrunner. “It’s a spot the place you go to drink and find yourself consuming, or go to eat and find yourself consuming.
“These sandwiches are phenomenal,” mentioned Mr. Newman, of the choices at Sanguich.
He favors the home specialty: the pan con lechon, a sandwich of shredded pork, pickled onions and garlic cilantro aioli on Cuban bread.
“I don’t know what number of of those sandwiches I’ve left in my life. You don’t need to eat one day-after-day and even each week at this age. But I’ve determined that any extra that I’m ever going to have are going to come back from Sanguich.”
The sandwich store, its menu impressed by “pre-revolutionary Cuba,” has areas in Little Havana and in Little Haiti. The stars of the menu are, not surprisingly, the sandwiches, all of which have beef or pork (vegetarian choices are mainly milkshakes and fries). And the restricted hours serve a really helpful function, not less than for Mr. Newman: “Thankfully, it closes at 6 p.m. — as a result of I’d get into horrible bother in the event that they had been open late.”
“It appears to be like like one thing that belongs in Newport, R.I., surrounded by lovely gardens,” mentioned Mr. Newman of Vizcaya Museum & Gardens, a sprawling property constructed as a trip dwelling within the early 1900s by a rich businessman named James Deering.
In 1953, Vizcaya, which sits on the water in Coconut Grove, formally opened as a museum. A type of American Versailles, Vizcaya has acres of out of doors gardens, a dozen buildings impressed by Italian Renaissance and Mediterranean types, a restaurant, occasion areas and, naturally, secret passageways all through.
“There’s one thing sort of melancholy about it for me, like Xanadu in ‘Citizen Kane’ or the Hearst Castle — type of monuments to oneself. But it’s lovely,” Mr. Newman mentioned.
Vizcaya has had many notable visitors through the years, together with Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Queen Elizabeth II. “As a lot as I admire the displays, I like to type of wander across the gardens and get a bit misplaced,” Mr. Newman mentioned. “You can look out on the bay from this Gatsby-esque home and simply lose your self. I bear in mind liking the way in which that felt very a lot.”
“I went right here for the primary time final evening, and it was superb — sort of this bizarre, unusual, fantastic expertise. My spouse and I walked into what seemed to be a hostel. There was a man behind a desk who was going over a invoice with some backpacker, and my spouse and I had been like, ‘this can’t be the place.’”
In truth, 27 Restaurant is a part of the Freehand Hotel, an upscale hostel a few blocks from the Miami Beach. “Then we’re on this pool space lit by tiki torches, and I lastly requested somebody, ‘Is there a restaurant right here?’ Around the nook, as you bought nearer, you heard how alive it was,” Mr. Newman mentioned.
The menu borrows from American South and Afro-Caribbean meals. The décor is eclectic and mismatched, the tables are communal, and “the oyster mushrooms are superb,” Mr. Newman mentioned. “So are the shrimp dumplings. We had three orders of them.”
“I’m 53, I don’t actually exit wherever anymore, however Miami has a special vitality,” mentioned Mr. Newman, whose favourite after-hours spot is Siboney Night Club in West Miami. The salsa membership, open Thursdays to Saturdays from 11 p.m. to five a.m., is “very no frills,” he mentioned. Its authenticity makes him a repeat customer.
“It’s not a kind of locations that you’d stroll by it and go, ‘Oh, we’ve bought to go in and see what’s happening,’” he mentioned. “It’s solely Latin and there’s one thing transportive about it.”
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