Dispatches • Miami — Part III

Tam Tam to Sunrise: The Night That Proved It

On lotus root salad at 10:45, espresso martinis at midnight, grilled cheese at 4 AM, and cotton candy clouds over Brickell at dawn.

Jonathan • The Oltre Way February 8, 2026

We sat down to dinner at 10:45 on a Sunday night and didn't get home until sunrise. That sounds wild if you're not from here. In Miami it's just how the night works. You eat late, you drink somewhere you didn't plan on finding, you walk into Space at 1 AM knowing full well you're not leaving until the sky turns pink.

The whole day had been building to this. Pérez Art Museum in the afternoon. A bottle of Bordeaux at Lagniappe in the early evening. Then an hour on the balcony doing absolutely nothing, watching the bay change color from the 17th floor. That hour is the reason the rest of the night was possible.

• • •

10:45 PM — Tam Tam. Vietnamese fusion on NW 1st Street. Downtown on a Sunday has this energy where everyone out is out on purpose. Tam Tam doesn't try too hard, which is exactly why it works. We ordered the lotus root salad and the wings and both were genuinely unreal. The lotus root was crisp and delicate and layered in a way you just don't expect at 11 PM. The wings were sticky and perfect. We didn't know it yet but we were fueling up for what was coming.

• • •

12:00 AM — Right Hand. We found this place walking from Tam Tam to Space. Didn't plan it. A narrow cocktail bar on SE 2nd Ave with this gorgeous purple light and a farm-to-bar thing going on. We ordered three espresso martinis because we needed the caffeine more than the cocktail and honestly there's no better way to get it at midnight.

Ten minutes earlier we didn't know this place existed. Now we're standing in purple light with espresso martinis shifting gears from dinner into whatever Space was about to be. This is what Miami does. The best things just appear between where you were and where you're going.

1:00 AM — Club Space. From the outside it looks like a warehouse on NE 11th Street. Inside it's something else entirely. The sound system hits your chest before your ears catch up. The room is dark and full and alive and it erases everything outside of it. Space runs until well past sunrise and everyone in that room knows it. That changes the way you move. There's no rush. The night has hours left to unfold.

Saturday February 7, 2026

Club Space Miami

The Terrace

Rony Seikaly · Rafael · Yamagucci · Siegel b2b Daizy

Yes, that Rony Seikaly — former NBA center turned house DJ. Only in Miami.

The Ground

OTHERWORLD: Mama Snake + Laure Croft

Resident Advisor Pick — "A raucous beauty contest of hard grooves and hypnotic techno"

We started on The Ground. Mama Snake and Laure Croft playing hard grooves and hypnotic techno and the sound system just swallows you whole. The Ground is the serious room. Darker, heavier, everyone fully locked in. The terrace upstairs is the opposite energy. Open sky, house music, Miami skyline behind you. You need both to do Space right.

The first grilled cheese came around 3 AM. They sell them from a window near the floor and they're as much a part of Space as the music. This one was a pause. Just standing there eating something hot and simple while the bass kept going through the walls. A little reset before diving back in.

We moved up to the terrace for the second half. Rony Seikaly playing house. Warm and rolling and easy to lose yourself in. The terrace is open air and at 4 AM in February the temperature is just perfect. Not thinking about anything. Not checking the time. Just there.

The second grilled cheese was different. We weren't pausing anymore. We were dancing and eating and laughing and just fully living the Space life. That thing where the night stops being separate moments and becomes one long beautiful thing.

There's a rhythm to Space you don't get until you've stayed long enough. The first couple hours you're adjusting. Your body calibrating to the volume and the dark and the crowd. Hours three and four are the peak. The DJs lock in. The room finds its pulse. You stop being a person at a club and start being part of something bigger. Hour five is the grilled cheese hour. The terrace hour. The hour where everyone still there chose to be there, and you can feel it.

We bounced between The Ground and the terrace infinity times. Down for the techno. Up for the air. Down for the bass. Up for the sky. That's what Space gives you that nowhere else in America gives you. Enough time for the night to have chapters.

6:15 AM — Five minute Uber back to Brickell. Empty streets. Not abandoned, just resting. We rode in silence because after five hours of sound, silence is its own thing. Everything that just happened still settling in.

Elevator to 17. Key card. Door. Balcony.

Cotton candy clouds everywhere. Pink and gold across the whole sky. Every glass tower in Brickell catching the first light and reflecting it back in pieces. Key Biscayne soft and low across the water. Standing there in the clothes I'd been dancing in for five hours, looking at a sky that would look fake in a photograph, and it was the most honest thing I'd seen all weekend.

I feel more alive in Miami than I do in La Jolla. That's not a complaint about home. Some cities just match your frequency. When you find one, you realize you'd been living with static you didn't even notice.

Three mornings on this balcony. Friday after the red-eye standby, the bay flat and bright. Saturday at noon post-Boombox, the city already humming. Sunday at dawn with cotton candy clouds and the whole weekend written across the sky. The room cost next to nothing split three ways on points. The balcony was worth the entire trip.

• • •

People talk about Miami like it's a place you go to be seen. Maybe that's South Beach on a Saturday in March. The Miami I found this weekend is something else. Lagniappe courtyards and Tam Tam lotus root and Right Hand espresso martinis and Space grilled cheeses at 4 AM. This city rewards you for staying long enough to actually see it. It doesn't perform for you. It lets you in if you commit to the full arc.

Amazonico to Lagniappe. Panamerico to Right Hand. Boombox to Space. This weekend wasn't a highlight reel. It was proof that the best travel experiences aren't planned or purchased. They're paced and surrendered to.

I know Miami now. Not the way a tourist knows it. The way you know a city when you've found your places in it and you can feel the rhythm of its nights and the 17th floor balcony isn't just a view anymore. It's the thing that holds the whole story together.

The flight's at 5. Time for one more Pura Vida smoothie and one more walk down a palm-lined boulevard and one more hour of beautiful nothing before going home.

At least, that was the plan.

Previous Sunday: The Art of the Long Day Next The Andaz Epilogue