Cheap beer and Death Burgers: Dive bar Tobacco Road is back in Brickell

Miami wasn’t ready to let go of Tobacco Road.

The old dive bar on South Miami Avenue, which closed in 2014, was the place people went when they weren’t ready to go home — in a part of Miami where no one was watching. But that was before the cranes transformed Brickell from a gritty riverfront nowhere into a tourist destination.

Now the glowing pink and green neon sign, bragging “‘til 5 a.m.,” is again aglow.

Master of themed restaurants Matt Kuscher, owner of Lokal and various Kush restaurants in Wynwood, Coconut Grove and Hialeah, has partnered on a new venture: A tribute to the original Tobacco Road bar.

Kuscher opened what he’s calling a two-year pop up in the former River Oyster Bar two doors down from the original Tobacco Road, which has since been torn down. Kuscher teamed with man who owns Tobacco Road’s name and warehouse full of the original memorabilia to dress the space like the original. He kept the original sign, dented during Hurricane Andrew, for the inside and ordered a new one for outside.

Inside is a sort of friends-in-low-places museum to the original bar, which was a local watering hole for everyone from federal prosecutors to bathroom coke dealers, a grungy, pretense-free zone that also served as a blues music venue.

But like a tribute band, it’s not trying to be the original, and Kuscher has made sure you know that he knows by hiding signs throughout that read “This S --- Ain’t The Real Tobacco Road.”

“It’s a theme bar. It’s a Hard Rock Café for Tobacco Road,” he said.

By that he means it’s a completely new restaurant, a son dressed in his father’s beer-soaked jeans — serious but not literal about representing the old Tobacco Road. Kuscher has worked on the project since 2015, since he teamed with the current Tobacco Road license owner, Bruce Carlson (also a former longtime customer), a founding partner, Patrick Gleber, and the daughter of another original partner, Paige Latterner.

“We have complete and total confidence in what Matt does,” Gleber said. “A lot of people worked hard to make Tobacco Road what it was. So the responsibility is his to keep it going. And I think he can do it.”

The team had originally hoped to open permanently in another location that became too expensive to build out in the new high-dollar Brickell. But when the River Oyster Bar moved a block east last year, they agreed with the landlord to move in as an extended pop up.

The food is typical of Kuscher’s restaurants, elevated bar food that goes well with beer: chili, barbecue chicken nachos, bang-bang shrimp. The menu will offer wings, as Tobacco Road did, and the team has recreated the Road’s Death Burger — which Kuscher said took several tries to get to taste authentic.

“I had to redo it like four times. Bruce kept giving me the thumbs down until I got it right,” Kuscher said.

Yes, there will be craft beer, which is Kuscher’s passion, but given Tobacco Road’s pedigree, there is also “beer I wouldn’t dream of serving in my other restaurants:” cheap, fizzy, cold yellow and, in one case, paired with a shot of Jägermeister.

The space seats 95, including outdoor seating for 10 and a 30-person private dining room.

During the restaurant’s soft opening last week, one of Gleber’s longtime friends and an old Tobacco Road patron stopped in for a Death Burger. His review: “There’s no smell. And the employees are all really nice — so it’s not Tobacco Road,” Gleber recalled, laughing.

“There were a lot of good feelings that went into Tobacco Road and made it special,” Gleber said. “This is a nod to what Tobacco Road was.”

A Tribute to Tobacco Road

Address: 650 South Miami Ave., Brickell

Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday-Thursday. 11:30 a.m. to midnight, Friday-Saturday.

More info: 786-703-3120; KushHopsitality.com