Las’ Lap

Las’ Lap is the Afro-Caribbean rum bar and restaurant that James Beard Award-winning chef Kwame Onwuachi opened inside the Daydrift Hotel at 2216 Park Avenue, along the Collins Canal in South Beach. It opened on 7 August 2025 as the first expansion of his New York rum bar of the same name, and it brings Trinidadian-rooted cooking and a serious rum programme to a part of Miami Beach that has plenty of restaurants and very few of either.

What the Name Means

The name is not decorative. In Trinidad and Tobago, “las’ lap” is the final hour of Carnival – the last pass through the streets when revellers dance, toast and stretch the celebration out before it ends. Onwuachi took it from his Trinidadian grandfather, and the restaurant is built around that idea of an unhurried final stretch of a night rather than a dinner slot to be turned over. Understanding that explains the pacing, the volume and the fact that the room is at its best late rather than early.

The Food: Caribbean First

The kitchen works from Onwuachi’s Trinidadian heritage through a Miami lens, which means the dishes read Caribbean first and pick up Cuban and Latin inflections rather than the reverse. South Beach snapper comes ceviche-style with guacamole and plantain chips. Escovitch crab claws are dressed with carrot, onion and scotch bonnet. A Rasta pasta bucatini pairs manila clams with a jerk-spiced clam bianco. The oxtail Cubano is mojo-marinated and finished with wagyu bacon and shaved truffle, and there is a Haitian-inspired wagyu griot alongside pimento-smoked sticky wings glazed in hot honey and jerk barbecue. It is a menu with a point of view rather than a survey of the Caribbean, and it rewards ordering across it instead of one dish each.

How to Order Across the Menu

The menu is built to be shared and it punishes ordering one dish per person, because the plates are not sized as conventional starters and mains. A workable approach for two is one raw or cold dish, one of the smaller hot plates, and one substantial dish between you, adding more once you have seen the portions. For four, the sticky wings and the crab claws both work as things to pick at while the table settles, and the oxtail Cubano is substantial enough that ordering one to share is more sensible than one each. The Rasta pasta is the dish most likely to divide a table, because the jerk spicing runs through the sauce rather than sitting on top, so anyone cautious about heat should ask before committing to it as their main plate. Scotch bonnet appears in more than one dish and it is used for flavour as much as for heat, but it is genuinely present rather than decorative. Pace the meal to the room rather than the other way around: the kitchen and the bar are running to the same rhythm, and a table that orders everything at once will finish long before the evening does, which is precisely the opposite of what the restaurant is designed for.

The Rum Programme

The bar is the reason the word “rum” sits in the name ahead of “restaurant”. The list runs deep across the Caribbean’s producing islands, and the cocktails are built on it rather than treating rum as one spirit among several. If you drink rum seriously, this is one of the few rooms in Miami Beach set up to accommodate that; if you do not, the bar team is used to steering people who have only ever met rum in a daiquiri. Sitting at the bar and asking for guidance is the intended use of the room, not an imposition.

The Rooftop

Above the dining room and bar there is a rooftop lounge, and it runs a different programme: weekend DJ sets, cocktails and open-air gatherings. That matters for planning, because it means an evening here can move upward as it goes – dinner downstairs, then the roof – without leaving the building or paying a separate cover at another venue. If the rooftop is the reason you are coming, target Friday or Saturday, when the DJ programming runs.

Hours and Booking

Service runs Wednesday through Sunday from 5:00 PM, closing at 11:00 PM on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday and at midnight on Friday and Saturday. The restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday, which catches people out more than any other detail. Reservations go through Resy and are strongly recommended – on Friday and Saturday this is a reservation-driven room rather than a reliable walk-in, and the bar fills alongside the tables. Midweek is a genuinely different proposition, with walk-ins far more realistic.

Where It Sits

2216 Park Avenue is on the Collins Canal, north of Lincoln Road and west of the Collins Avenue hotel strip – a quieter, less trafficked block than the Ocean Drive end of South Beach, and closer to the Convention Center than to the sand. Being inside a hotel rather than on a restaurant row means it does not pick up much passing trade, which is part of why booking matters. For a wider view of where it sits among Miami Beach bars, the rum focus and the rooftop put it in a small category locally.

Who It Suits

Las’ Lap suits anyone who wants Caribbean cooking with a specific point of view rather than a generic tropical menu, drinkers who want rum taken seriously, and groups who want dinner and a rooftop in one building. It suits a late booking better than an early one, by design. It suits less well anyone turning up on a Monday or Tuesday, anyone wanting a quiet dinner – the room is built for noise and movement – and anyone hoping to walk in on a Friday night without a reservation.