This fall, Little River's new dining rooms are opening within a few doors of each other on the 8200 block of Northeast Second Avenue. Roughly ten blocks south, a rum distillery and a run of Art Week club nights have taken warehouse space on 71st Street.
That split explains most of what's opened this fall and most of what's on the calendar through the first week of December. A night in Little River now often starts on one strip and ends on the other.
Three addresses on the same block of NE Second Avenue
Take the 8200 block of Northeast Second Avenue. Within about 70 street numbers there's one restaurant that came back, one in preview service, and one that's announced but not open yet.
- Taquiza, 8246 NE 2nd Ave. Taquiza is back at its tortilla-factory address after serving its last tacos at the North Beach location, Miami New Times reported in its roundup of August openings.
- Anako, 8222 NE 2nd Ave. This is a modern Filipino restaurant. It was serving friends-and-family previews in mid-October, according to a first-look review from The Whet Palette.
- Bar Fideo, 8291 NE 2nd Ave. It comes from Magie Wine Bar co-owner Caroline Strauss and chef Ivan Barros. Miami New Times said in late September that it would open in fall 2026, and The Infatuation's fall openings guide had it at "late 2026."
Anako's own description, quoted in The Whet Palette's review, calls the food "rooted in modern Filipino flavors and shaped by Miami." The preview menu covered in that review included pan de sal with butter, basil and honey; pork and shrimp lumpia with a chili-lime sauce; a kinilaw crudo of hiramasa finished tableside with coconut-calamansi; chili garlic noodles with prawns; and a Duroc pork tomahawk. Since these were friends-and-family dinners, expect the menu and hours to change as the restaurant moves into regular service.
The same corridor runs north to Plant the Future at 8484 NE 2nd Ave. WSVN reported in September that the shop had added a café about six months earlier, with an outdoor garden and an art studio. A short walk east, Upper Eastside Hangout opened in August at 701 NE 79th St. New Times described an open-air garden, food stalls, lawn games and a small cocktail shack.
All of these are storefront-sized places that you can walk between, with garden seating where there's room. The Second Avenue spaces suit dinner service. They don't have room for a bottling line or a dance floor. Those need warehouse space.
A 22,000-square-foot rum operation on Northwest 71st Street
The Little River Distillery is at 73 NW 71st St. WSVN reported on Oct. 15 that it had just opened. WSVN described a 22,000-square-foot space with an aging house, a lab, a tasting room and two bars.
Miami New Times toured it in September and called the outside "an unassuming warehouse" on "a nondescript stretch of Northwest 71st Street." Co-founder Carlos Espasas explained the scale to the paper:
"We are a turnkey manufacturing plant and fully operational distillery, as well as the only rum aging house in Miami."
The company's About page says the rum is made in the Venezuelan tradition. New Times reports that the base spirit comes from the Dominican Republic and is aged at the Little River warehouse. Inside, stacks of ex-bourbon, sherry and cognac barrels sit across from a working bottling line. The speakeasy, called the Founders Lounge, is decorated to look like an 18th-century apothecary.
The distillery's tour page lists a guided visit of about 90 minutes through the stills and the aging house, a tasting of rums aged one to eight years, a welcome cocktail and a 12-person cap, starting at $45 per person. Tours need a reservation, and the visit page says bar visits are currently by appointment.
The New Times piece also put this block on a bigger map of Miami. "As Wynwood fully matures into a mainstream, heavily developed commercial district," the paper wrote, "the city's creative center of gravity is quietly migrating north." The distillery is a working factory with a bar inside, and it's the kind of business that needs Little River's warehouse blocks more than its storefronts.
Art Week lands in the warehouses first
The calendar shows the same split. Miami Art Week runs Nov. 30 to Dec. 6, 2026, and Art Basel Miami Beach runs Dec. 4 to 6. In Little River, the biggest events of the week are booked into Little River Studios at 300 NE 71st St., on the same street as the distillery.
unKommon Events has three headliner nights listed there:
| Date | Event at Little River Studios | Presenter |
|---|---|---|
| Wed., Dec. 2 | Guy Gerber's Rumors, with Monolink, RICHE and Monobase | unKommon Events |
| Thu., Dec. 3 | Francis Mercier Presents Solèy | unKommon Events and Authentic Live |
| Fri., Dec. 4 | Bedouin Presents SAGA | unKommon Events |
The series pass on DICE covers four nights, Dec. 2 through 5, running 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. each night. Wednesday's show is billed as the start of unKommon's Art Week programming. So the warehouse strip starts its Art Week two days before Art Basel opens across the bay.
For anyone who lives within a few blocks of 71st Street, that means four straight nights of crowds arriving and leaving until 3 a.m. on a stretch that New Times called nondescript only a few months ago.
The Sunday that links the two strips
The one recurring event that crosses both halves of the neighborhood happens the day before Art Week starts. The Progressive Art Brunch on Sunday, Nov. 29, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., opens contemporary galleries across Little Haiti, Little River and the Performing Arts District for a free, self-guided afternoon. This year it also ran on July 26 and Oct. 4, which makes Nov. 29 the last date in its 2026 series.
The participating galleries are Dot Fiftyone Gallery, Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Opa Projects, Piero Atchugarry Gallery, Ascaso Gallery, Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Voloshyn Gallery, Andrew Reed Gallery, Tomas Redrado Art, La Cometa and Mahara+Co. Details are on the Progressive Art Brunch site. Galleries are open during the day, which means you can do the brunch route and still make an early dinner on Second Avenue.
Before that, the calendar is light. Green Space Miami holds an opening reception for "Flavors That Form Us" on Nov. 5 at 7200 Biscayne Blvd., which is on the eastern edge of the area rather than in the Second Avenue core, according to Miami & Miami Beach.
What's on the books further out
Two items have no firm date yet. Bar Fideo is still listed as late 2026. On the water, the City of Miami's Little River Mini Park project page lists a new baywalk, a kayak launch, a raised seawall, green areas, lighting and a stormwater pump station, but the page gives no construction schedule.
Here's the order for the next six weeks. Anako and Taquiza on the 8200 block of NE 2nd Ave are open for dinner now, and the distillery on NW 71st St. is booking tours. The galleries open for the final Progressive Art Brunch of the year on Nov. 29. Little River Studios hosts unKommon's nights from Dec. 2 through Dec. 5.
When a warehouse becomes a distillery or an event venue, it changes what the buildings around it can earn. The CS Organization advises owners and investor-sponsors on mixed-use and light-industrial property across NYC and South Florida. If you own a building on a corridor that's changing the way 71st Street is and want to know what its next tenant could be worth, Request a Valuation or Schedule a Consultation.
