Guantanamera Cigars

Some rooms make you choose — the cigar, the drink, or the music. On the 1400 block of Calle Ocho, Guantanamera declines the question.

Jose and Margarita Montagne have run this corner since 1997, and the family was in tobacco long before that — the lineage runs some 130 years back to Las Villas, Cuba, where a French great-grandfather named Montagne first planted himself in the leaf trade. What the revolution took, Calle Ocho gave back. This room is the proof.

The Roll

A torcedor works at the front of the shop — a fixture of the street as much as the store. Watch the day's cigars take shape on your way to a seat, then smoke one rolled a few feet from where you're sitting. It's the Calle Ocho covenant, kept daily.

The Room

Evenings here have a shape: the band sets up, the tables fill, and the place moves from cigar shop to something closer to a club — Miami New Times once called it the best Latin club in the city, and they weren't wrong to blur the category. Come Friday or Saturday, the room doesn't close until 3 a.m. Settle in accordingly.

The Bar

Mojitos are the house handshake, made properly and often. The name on your glass may match the name on the band of your cigar — the family bottles its own Guantanamera rum and beer, and roasts a coffee under the same flag. A cafecito before the first light of your evening is the move.

Why We Picked It

Because it's everything Miami claims to be, in one room: hand-rolled heritage, a real bar, live music, and hours that respect a long evening. Plenty of rooms in this city do one of those things well. Guantanamera does all of them at once, and has for nearly thirty years.