One of Miami Beach’s best bars just got an ’80s makeover

Award-winning Miami Beach bar The Scapegoat has just undergone a makeover with hunter-green walls, lower tables, and old-fashioned cocktails.

Photo by R.C. Visuals

South of Fifth cocktail bar The Scapegoat has a new look and menu straight out of the ’80s and early 2000s. Now, hunter-green walls, lower tables, and a logo inspired by The Strokes fill the room. Eight years after opening, the 30-seat bar at 100 Collins Ave. has completed a renovation led by bartender Tom Lasher-Walker and his team.

The Ariete Hospitality Group spot also picked up New Times’ Best Bar in Miami Beach award this year. The refresh gives regulars a different room for their usual round, with a design that draws on 1980s South Beach and a cocktail program influenced by early-2000s New York.

Amber lighting, glossy green tile, dark wood, and leather-toned seating round out the room.

Green walls and a Strokes-inspired logo

Lasher-Walker and the team handled the remodel in-house, choosing the updates for the bar’s 635-square-foot space. Hunter green replaces the brown-black walls, while standard-height wooden tables replace high-tops. Amber lighting, glossy green tile, dark wood, and leather-toned seating round out the room.

The new logo has a roundabout origin. According to the announcement, it references the wordmark from the Strokes’ 2001 debut album, “Is This It,” which drew on the chrome-style branding of Magna cigarettes, a budget brand popular in the 1980s and ’90s. The team used that reference, along with the lighting and furniture changes, to update the small room.

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Modern classics and house drinks

The New York influence has a connection to Lasher-Walker’s own career, who moved to New York in late 2014 to work at Attaboy, which occupies the former Milk & Honey space on Eldridge Street. That same year, he won the Bacardi Legacy Global Cocktail Competition.

At The Scapegoat, the menu includes drinks like a frozen Vesper, white Negroni, Penicillin, Waterlily, and Revolver, alongside drinks Lasher-Walker developed during his time behind popular Miami bars.

An updated Old-Fashioned at the Scapegoat

The “Hidalgo,” created at The Scapegoat in 2025, features mezcal, pomegranate amaro, lime, and orgeat. “Beny’s Daiquiri” combines Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO with Velvet Falernum, Giffard Banana, lime, and Angostura bitters, while the “Hollywood Margarita” comes with blanco tequila, triple sec, Ancho Reyes Verde, and lime.

The announcement lists $12 happy-hour cocktails daily from 5 to 8 p.m., including daiquiris, gimlets, Palomas, Manhattans, and mojitos. Beers run $9 to $14, with a nonalcoholic Kölsch-style ale among the options, and wines by the glass cost $17.

The Scapegoat. 100 Collins Ave., CU-4, Miami Beach; scapegoatsobe.com.