The Corner on 79th Street That's Been Pouring Since 1937 Just Got a Backyard

From 2015 to 2018, Stephanie Vitori ran a Cheeseburger Baby at NE 79th Street and NE Second Avenue. She later concentrated on the Washington Avenue original in South Beach, which ran for 25 years until it closed. Her next stop is back on 79th Street, in a stall in the courtyard at 701 NE 79th St. Miami New Times reported in August that she feels right at home there.

Most of what is new along this stretch of the Upper Eastside and Little River this fall follows the same pattern. The license on the corner is older than nearly every building around it. The burger counter returned to a street it had already worked. The taqueria went back into the factory where it makes its own tortillas. A noodle pop-up got its first permanent address. The openings are mostly returns, and that makes the corridor feel settled instead of newly discovered.

Eighty-nine years on one license

The courtyard now called Upper Eastside Hangout occupies the former property of The Anderson. Miami New Times reports that it holds one of the city's oldest continuously operating liquor licenses, with records dating it to 1937.

The operators have changed several times. The license has stayed with the corner.

The Anderson took its name from Hugh Anderson, the developer who helped build the Venetian Causeway. That gives a cocktail bar on 79th Street a link to one of the oldest crossings over Biscayne Bay. The bar has had three names in ten years. The paperwork has outlasted all of them.

The new operators live a few streets away

All We Need Hospitality Group is new, founded by four partners: Travis Rogers, John Fortini, Anthony Mejia and Victor Ramos. According to the paper, all four live in the neighborhood.

"We wanted the Upper Eastside to have a little bit of everything in one place, a spot to hang out for all," Rogers said in the announcement. "We live in the area, and we know this has been missing for a while now."

Mejia put it more plainly: "The corner sat empty long enough. We're here because we live here. We saw what was missing, and we wanted to be the ones to build it."

You can see that local thinking in the layout. The courtyard seats more than 250 guests at picnic tables, high-tops and kid-size picnic tables, on green turf under cream shade sails strung with lights. Big LED screens show games and movie nights. Cornhole boards and a foosball table fill out the lawn. The kid-size tables add another seating option alongside the picnic tables and high-tops.

The smallest room on the lot

The space that most recalls the old Anderson is down a palm-lined path. The Original Bar Shack is a coral-and-green striped mini-house that the group bills as "Miami's smallest cocktail bar." It has 15 seats in 200 square feet. Tropical leaf-print wallpaper, brass palm sconces and amber lighting make it moodier than the sunny lawn outside.

The whole property covers 17,000 square feet. The bar room is about one percent of it. The 15-seat shack and the 250-guest courtyard sit on the same lot, so the corner works as a quiet bar and a crowded lawn at once.

The cocktails are built on Florida-grown ingredients, including Datil peppers, muscadine grapes and pecan infusions. The Florida Spritz combines Ketel One Botanical peach and orange blossom, Munyon's Paw-Paw Liqueur, mint, lemon, grapefruit, hibiscus bitters and prosecco. The Dade Runner uses Sailor Jerry spiced rum, banana, blackberry liqueur, lime, pineapple ginger beer and orange bitters.

As of the August opening, prices were set for regulars more than special occasions:

• Beer: $5 at all times
• Happy hour, Tuesday through Friday, 2 to 6 p.m.: $5 mixed drinks, frozen cocktails and wines
• Standard pricing: $12 mixed drinks, $15 specialty cocktails, $8 wine

During happy hour, a mixed drink costs $5 instead of $12, and beer costs $5 all day. That pricing suits people who stop in after work on a Wednesday.

Four stalls, and most of them are coming home

The food stalls follow the same pattern as the license. Cheeseburger Baby headlines the courtyard with its Certified Angus beef burgers, the "Classic 15th S. Frita," chicken wings and onion rings. Vitori called the Washington Avenue closure "a transition" on Instagram before the 79th Street news was announced.

The other three stalls:

1. Tacomiendo makes street-style tacos from family recipes passed down by owner Carlos's father. The menu includes birria tacos, tostones rellenos and a churrasco sandwich combo. On Taco Tuesdays, tacos are $3 and margaritas are $5 all day.
2. Noodle Bar hand-pulls noodles and makes dumplings to order. This is its first permanent home after five years of pop-ups.
3. ProfessorSnacks sells international snacks, including mystery chip boxes, strawberry shortcake Kit Kats and cinnamon bun Oreos.

Of the four, one returned to a street it already knew, one passed down a family's recipes, and one stopped moving after five years. Only ProfessorSnacks has no history here.

Up NE Second Avenue, the tortillas came back to the factory

Up NE Second Avenue at 8246 NE 2nd Ave., Taquiza is serving again from its Little River tortilla commissary. Miami New Times listed the return in its roundup of August openings and named chef Steve Santana. Eater Miami's heat map, updated September 30, 2026, describes a counter-service taqueria with tacos on stone-ground yellow-corn tortillas and the restaurant's signature heirloom blue-corn totopos. The menu is gluten- and seed-oil-free, and fresh masa, tortillas and chips are sold to go.

Diners can watch the tortillas being made. So the meal is served in the same building where its most important ingredient is produced. Few restaurants in the city can say that.

The Infatuation's review counts ten tacos, recommends the crispy fish taco and notes there is no indoor seating. You eat on the patio or take your food to go. We could not confirm a specific reopening date or current hours, so check with the restaurant before you plan a weekday lunch around it.

The October calendar on and around 79th Street

The courtyard has started posting a weekly schedule, and the wider neighborhood has a date of its own this week.

• Saturday, October 10, noon to 5 p.m.: Little Haiti Little River Art Days, a neighborhood-wide day with participating arts organizations. The event page lists no single address, so the day spreads across the neighborhood.
• Saturday, October 17: Upper Eastside Hangout is showing FSU vs. UM on its big screen. Drinks are half off after every touchdown, with beer-bucket specials.
• The last Sunday of each month: the Upper Eastside Flea Market brings local vendors, food trucks, drink specials and live music to the courtyard. The venue's listing for September 27 billed that date as the market's debut. If the monthly schedule holds, the next one falls on October 25. No listing for that date had been posted when we checked.

A monthly market with live music and food trucks in the same courtyard as a football watch party fits what the four partners said they set out to build: one place in the neighborhood with a little of everything.

Two rooms still waiting on the lot

The courtyard is the first of three concepts planned for the 17,000-square-foot property. Here to There, an indoor lounge, was targeting a September opening. In Between Wine Garden, a self-service wine spot, was scheduled for later this year.

Those targets come from the August opening announcement, so before you plan an evening around either room, check with the venue. When both open, the 1937 license will cover a lawn, a 15-seat bar shack, an indoor lounge and a wine garden on one corner of 79th Street.

At Jomed Construction, much of our work involves outdoor rooms: shade structures, palm-lined paths and the transition between a covered bar and an open lawn, like the ones that make this courtyard work. If you're planning a courtyard, pergola or garden room for your own property, we'd welcome the chance to help you plan it carefully. Request a Project Consultation.