It’s no accident that this city’s most significant relic is the Miami Circle – this is a place that repeats itself. Sure, South Florida is constantly renewing, rebuilding and reimagining itself, but somehow the old patterns keep returning, folded up inside different envelopes.
Downtown is experiencing a long overdue rediscovery, as the business district around Flagler is giving way, slowly but surely, to pedestrian zones, cute boutiques and odd little bars (see our November 2022 profile of Lost Boy Dry Goods).
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The historic downtown Miami Walgreens.
Perhaps the best symbol of this is Julia & Henry’s (786.703.2126), located at 200 E Flagler St. It’s a perfect example of Miami circling in and around itself on several levels. For one thing, it’s a trendy new food court inside the old Walgreens building that takes the old pattern of an 1980s-style shopping mall and folds it into a new envelope of “What if we took out all the shops and replaced them with great places to eat and drink?”
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The Depression-era downtown Miami Walgreens is now a chic food court named for Henry Flagler and Julia Tuttle.
Originally, the five-story Walgreens Drug Store was built as a Depression-era statement of economic optimism in the face of an uncertain future. By the time the pandemic hit, the aging art deco building seemed more likely to be razed than renovated. Yet, here we are. The new name, though, is perhaps the ultimate example of Miami circling.
Henry, of course, is Henry Flagler, the railroad magnate who could be called the father of the city of Miami. Julia is Julia Tuttle, the Miami matriarch who first bought the land on which the city was built, lured Flagler down with the promise of a fortune to be made, and established one rock-solid rule for the proposed settlement before the first brick was laid: No bars in the city limits.
Flagler, a canny negotiator, got the teetotaling Tuttle to agree to one exception: Drinks were available inside his own hotel, the only wet spot in a dry city. That made the Royal Palm Hotel quite popular. Two years after it opened, Tuttle passed on, and that demon rum was embraced by a new breed of Miami businessman, beginning with an establishment called the Majestic Saloon. The majestically mustachioed fellow who ran it was Byron Fulton Lasseter.
Today, there are bars all across the Magic City and the greater Biscayne Corridor, a development at which Tuttle would no doubt tut-tut terribly. The one that just opened in June on the top level of Julia & Henry’s, though, is named The Lasseter. So what was once Miami’s first bar – or near enough – is now one of its latest.
While the average visitor might go for the eternal present of the anonymously Floridian – icy concoctions blended on the beach or premium rums sipped on a hotel’s rooftop terrace – the time-conscious Biscayne Tippler also savors a methodically crafted blend of the past with the future.
The Past: A Man with a Majestic Mustache
(Ancestry.com)
The majestically mustachioed Byron Fulton “B.F.” Lasseter ran the Majestic Saloon long ago, when a still-fledgling Miami ceased to be a dry city.
Byron Fulton Lasseter, or B.F., was a former Confederate officer who came to the fledgling city of Miami after his son, Byron Ivanhoe, or B.I., convinced him it was a land of opportunity. The younger Lasseter had founded the Miami Grocery Company with J.E. Lummus, co-owned the Lasseter-McDonald Hardware Store at what’s now the corner of Flagler Street and Miami Avenue, and chipped into Henry Flagler’s construction of the Oversea Railway to Key West. With his dad, he formed Lasseter & Company to set up the Majestic Saloon.
Its first location was at the corner of what’s now Miami Avenue and SE Second Street – but the two were forced to move to another location by what might be called the “Tuttle disciples.” This teetotaling faction missed having a dry Miami, and would soon welcome national Prohibition with open arms.
One of them bought the building and gave the Majestic three days to close up shop. But by the next year, 1905, the Lasseters reopened just a block further north. Only now, they had two stories, with a café upstairs that they advertised as having “the best the markets afford in Steaks, Chops, Fish, Oysters, in each season, Game, etc., and the service is first class in every respect.”
(Jeannie Balfour for Biscayne Times)
The Lasseter Co. carries on the tradition of Miami’s earliest saloonkeepers.
The next few years saw an ongoing war between the colorful Lasseter clan and the anti-saloon partisans. Liquor licenses were revoked and reinstated. The county outlawed alcohol. Papa Lasseter tried his hand at brewing low-alcohol “near-beer.” Local law enforcement shut him down. The Lasseters then sued and won on constitutional grounds. But then the state outlawed near-beer specifically, a ban soon followed by Prohibition. The elder Lasseter spent the rest of his working life selling a locally made soft drink, Chero-Cola, which carried the slogan “There Is None So Good!”
The Future: A Building Reborn
(Grant Balfour for Biscayne Times)
The Lasseter bathroom is an unexpected entertainment center
No one at The Lasseter admits to having seen the spectral shadow of a man with a majestic mustache looming around the place. But perhaps there’s been far too much going on lately for anyone to notice him.
On opening weekend, the line to get into Julia & Henry’s reached down the block, and every chef and bartender inside was swamped. There are three floors of trendy eateries offering everything from Burmese curry and wagyu burgers to fried chicken and chayote tacos. Ladies of a certain fashionable disposition, or kilt-wearers of any gender, please note that some of the upper floors are made of very thick but very transparent glass.
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La Época sells natural and organic wine in the center of downtown’s newest gem of a food hall.
Each level has its own watering hole, each with its own claim on Miami history. The natural wine bar La Época dominates the ground floor, named in honor of the Alonso family who, until 2018, operated the building as a retail store in exile, the first La Época in Havana having been confiscated by the Cuban government. On the second story, the late, lamented Boxelder bottle shop and taproom returns to Miami as the Boxelder craft beer market.
Looking down over it all from the top deck, the staff and patrons at The Lasseter are just as swept up in the blur of activity as anyone. Bartender Shaunn says he and his coworkers spent the weekend pouring espresso martinis, Moscow mules and old fashioneds to a thirsty crowd. The menu offers unusual specialty cocktails like Gold in Berlin, mixed from Don Fulano Blanco tequila, Chinola Passion Fruit liqueur, vanilla agave, lemon juice and bitters
For the most part, however, it’s the ambience that carries the Lasseter. It is unexpectedly large, with what amounts to a bar behind the bar: a second seating area tucked away in a slightly secluded corner. The decor is … well, there are chic hexagonal mirrors on the walls punctuated with brilliantly illuminated rolls of toilet paper. Hanging there. Ends swaying in the breeze. They do make useful cocktail napkins, one has to admit.
And then there are the actual bathrooms.
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The Boxelder, located on the second story at Julia & Henry’s, is a destination for craft beer enthusiasts.
It takes a certain amount of courage to turn your restrooms into a centerpiece, but whether it was the geniuses at Unfiltered Hospitality who dreamed up this place or supernatural inspiration gleaned from the Magic City’s bygone saloonkeeper, they have boldly gone where few cocktail bars dare tread.
The Insta-friendly facilities feature colorful couches, a wall of semi-trailer side-view mirrors, and a row of port-a-potty doors that open onto stalls with antique pull-chain commodes surrounded by faceted mirrors that wouldn’t have been out of place at Studio 54. There is no sink, per se, but a large wrought-iron fountain whose cherubs issue hot water at the press of a foot pedal.
Not only is it a unisex accommodation, but the pair of turntables underneath the truck mirrors indicate that on active evenings (FYI, the website says it’s Thursdays), it’s a washroom with a DJ. That is, a musical loo. A dance-party WC. “Un baño con bailando.”
Currently, The Lasseter has pride of place, perched at the top of the food court with a bird’s-eye view of nearly everything worth seeing (except maybe the key lime pie vending machine directly underneath it on the second floor).
By the time you read this, though, the folks behind Julia & Henry’s will have opened a rooftop restaurant run by Massimo Bottura, a chef with three Michelin stars under his belt, and a basement speakeasy – Jolene’s, a listening bar with karaoke rooms and studio space for podcasters – stretching the food-court fun across five stories.
This city may run in circles, but it never ceases to surprise. Here’s to making more history on the streets where B.F. Lasseter made Miami majestic.
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Julia & Henry’s is home to 25 eateries serving an array of food, from Burmese curry to chayote tacos.
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(Jeannie Balfour for Biscayne Times)
Bartender Shaunn hustles to keep up with drink orders during Lasseter’s busy opening weekend.
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(Jeannie Balfour for Biscayne Times)
A Moscow mule makes a cool accompaniment to international street food like wagyu burgers and fried chicken.