Apotheke, the botanical cocktail bar that began in 2008 behind an unmarked oak door on Doyers Street in New York's Chinatown, opens its South Beach outpost on Friday, Oct. 16. It sits inside Moxy South Beach at 915 Washington Avenue, but you will not find it by walking through the lobby. The way in is a door with no sign on it, straight off the Washington Avenue sidewalk.

That makes it the brand's fourth bar and its first anywhere outside New York and Los Angeles. Apotheke added a Los Angeles room in 2018 and a second Manhattan location, in NoMad, in 2022. Miami Beach is next, and the company is giving the Art Deco District a menu of its own rather than a copy of what it pours up north.

A pharmacy, more or less

The idea behind Apotheke is the old European apothecary, the kind of shop where a pharmacist steeped plants in alcohol to make tinctures and tonics. The bar runs on the same principle. Its bartenders use high-proof spirits to pull flavor out of herbs, flowers, roots and fruit, and the drinks are sorted on the menu the way a chemist might sort remedies: Health and Beauty, Stimulants, Painkillers, Aphrodisiacs, Euphoric Enhancers and Stress Relievers.

For South Beach, mixology director Nicolas O'Connor built a list of nine new drinks that the company says will be served only at the Washington Avenue bar. A few of them read like a tour of South Florida's pantry. Novia Del Sol, listed under Health and Beauty, starts with vodka infused with calendula and adds coconut, a California orange cordial, tamarind, turmeric, Meyer lemon and soda. Dawn Patrol, one of the Stimulants, is dark aged rum with ube, dark roast coffee, condensed coconut milk, cardamom and burnt cinnamon, finished with mint. That is a cafecito that has wandered into a tiki bar.

The Painkillers section includes Write It Off, which pairs bourbon with Amaro Montenegro, date nectar, tamarind, matcha bitters and candied almond. Under Aphrodisiacs is Bilongo, built on dark rum with acai, pistachio cream, lime, goji berry, perilla, maca root, sea salt and a Dubai chocolate bitters, a nod to the pistachio and chocolate bar that took over social media. The rest of the new list goes by Dry Until Vitae, Bait and Switch, Will-O'-The-Wisp, Ears to You and Collins Cure, the last one a name any South Beach local will recognize. Alongside them, the bar will rotate in older recipes from the New York and Los Angeles menus.

A family story behind the door

Apotheke was founded by siblings Heather Tierney and the late Christopher Tierney. Christopher, an artist as well as an entrepreneur, designed the brand's look and its concept, and the company says the South Beach room was inspired by his vision and finished by his longtime partners and friends. For regulars of the original Chinatown bar, that detail will land: the newest Apotheke was finished by the people who knew best what he wanted it to be.

The brand's rooms have a habit of winning design awards. Architectural Digest has named the Chinatown original one of the best speakeasies in America. The Los Angeles bar won a German Design Award for interior architecture, and the NoMad location took the Americas prize for club and bar design from the Society of British and International Interior Design in 2023. Each one is meant to feel like a slice of the natural world brought indoors, with a sense of play, and the South Beach space will add live music and DJ sets to the mix.

How to get in

Apotheke South Beach will be open every night from 6:30 p.m. until late. Walk-ins are welcome when there is room, and the company says reservation details are still to come, so the first weekend is likely to favor people who show up early. The Moxy's own dining page still lists the bar as coming soon, which is a good sign that Friday is a true opening night rather than a soft launch that has already been running for weeks.

The bar joins a hotel that has quietly turned into one of the busier food and drink addresses on Washington Avenue. Moxy South Beach, the 202-room hotel developed by Lightstone that opened in 2021, also houses Naked Tomato, a new modern Israeli restaurant from chef Eyal Shani, and Serena, an open-air rooftop with a Mexican and Latin menu. Bar Moxy in the lobby and the Tiendita cafe and taco window round it out. A dinner upstairs and a nightcap behind the unmarked door is now a full evening without moving the car.

What it means for the neighborhood

Washington Avenue has spent years as the street South Beach residents cut through on the way to somewhere else, with Collins and Ocean Drive getting the attention. A destination bar with a national following, and a door you have to know about, is the kind of tenant that gives locals a reason to stop. It also arrives at a useful moment: the season is turning, the evenings are cooling off, and Miami Beach's cocktail crowd has been hearing about this place from friends in New York for the better part of two decades.

If you want to be among the first through the door, go Friday or Saturday right at 6:30 p.m. Look for the entrance on Washington Avenue at the Moxy, not inside the hotel, and order Dawn Patrol first. It is the drink on the list that could only have been written for Miami.