The Scapegoat, the 30-seat cocktail bar tucked into Miami Beach’s South of Fifth neighborhood, has swapped its dark brown-black walls for a rich hunter green as part of a top-to-bottom interior and logo refresh inspired by the 1980s. The bar’s trademark high-top wooden tables are gone too, replaced with standard-height wood tables that change the whole feel of the tight 635-square-foot room.
Ariete Hospitality Group operates the bar, and the redesign was described by Community Newspapers as pairing “an intimate, 30-seat cocktail den” with a look that “pays homage to the 1980s.” The new space layers in warm amber lighting, illuminated bottles, glossy green tile, dark wood and leather-toned seating, giving the once shadowy hideaway a moodier but brighter glow. Bar lead Tom Lasher-Walker and his team steered the overhaul, according to the same report.
A Logo With Strokes-Era Roots
Per Miami New Times, the refreshed Scapegoat logo references The Strokes’ 2001 debut album Is This It, whose wordmark itself drew on the chrome-style branding of Magna Cigarettes, a budget cigarette brand popular in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s a small design detail, but it threads the needle between the bar’s new ’80s visual language and the early-2000s cocktail sensibility running through its drink menu.
That sensibility comes largely from Lasher-Walker himself. The bar lead moved to New York in late 2014 and worked at Attaboy, which occupies the former Milk & Honey space on Eldridge Street — a lineage the miamiculinarytours.com report and the same Community Newspapers piece connect directly to the Milk & Honey-era classics and equal-parts cocktails that now anchor The Scapegoat’s program. His resume also includes stints at The American Bar at The Savoy in London and Mae’s Room, and Miami New Times notes he won the Bacardi Legacy Global Cocktail Competition in 2014.
What’s Actually In The Glass
The cocktail list keeps a foot in both eras. Longtime staples like a Frozen Vesper, White Negroni, Penicillin, Waterlily and Revolver remain on the menu, according to Miami New Times, while newer additions push the early-2000s New York influence further. The Hidalgo, created at The Scapegoat in 2025, blends mezcal, pomegranate amaro, lime and orgeat, per Community Newspapers.
Beny’s Daiquiri combines Don Q Gran Reserva Añejo XO, Velvet Falernum, Giffard Banana, lime and Angostura bitters, while the Hollywood Margarita mixes blanco tequila, triple sec, Ancho Reyes Verde and lime — both detailed in the same report. Beer runs $9 to $14, including a nonalcoholic Kölsch-style ale, and wines by the glass are priced at $17.
The bar also offers daily happy-hour cocktails for $12 from 5 to 8 p.m., including daiquiris, gimlets, palomas, Manhattans and mojitos, according to Miami New Times. That current pricing differs from an earlier listing on miamiculinarytours.com, which described a 5 to 7 p.m. happy hour with $10 select cocktails and $5 draft beers, and from a 2020 miaminewtimes.com writeup that mentioned $5 domestic bottles and cans along with $3 Jameson shots and beers for service-industry patrons all day. The dossier does not clarify when those older terms shifted to the current $12 pricing.
Part Of A Broader Cocktail Moment
The refresh also lands amid what fb101.com describes as the enduring pull of the modern classic cocktail, as ready-to-drink and experiential drink categories keep expanding — a backdrop that helps explain why a bar built on equal-parts classics and Milk & Honey-style technique still resonates a near-decade after it first opened, according to miamilivingmagazine.com.
The Scapegoat sits at 100 Collins Ave., # Cu-4, in Miami Beach and is open daily from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m., according to Community Newspapers. More details and the current menu are listed at scapegoatsobe.com.
