Vista Rooftop Returns, Now with Retro Glam and $10 Mojitos
Written by Eric Barton | July 2, 2025
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Miami has no shortage of rooftop bars—but Vista might just be the one that remembers why we fell for them in the first place. It’s breezy and sun-soaked by day, candlelit and cocktail-slicked by night, perched above Brickell in a way that feels equal parts escape and invitation.
Reopened after a redesign that leans hard into mid-century Latin American glam, Vista now looks like the kind of place Carmen Miranda might’ve held court with a hibiscus cosmo in one hand and a cigar in the other. It sits atop the Novotel Miami Brickell, next to the pool, surrounded by towering glass high-rises and a hazy glimpse of Biscayne Bay. You come for the view, and probably stay for the slushie menu.
Vista’s makeover comes courtesy of the design firm Carte Blanched, which smartly avoided Brickell’s usual sterile rooftop aesthetic and instead went with breezy elegance—tropical plants, mosaic tiles, rattan everything. It’s an aesthetic callback to the golden age of Havana nightlife, only with better cocktails and a fitness class or two.
Food here is the elevated-snack kind: mango and cucumber salad, tuna poke, ceviche, sticky wings, and something called the Vista Smashed Burger that may or may not have been engineered for Instagram. Drinks skew classic with a Miami twist. There’s a hibiscus cosmo. A pisco sour. A slushie list, because this is a rooftop and someone somewhere is always drinking something neon.
They’ve also packed in a full week of programming: Margarita Wednesdays, Havana Nights on Fridays with live Cuban music and hand-rolled cigars, and Saturday morning AquaFit for the overachievers trying to justify the burger. There’s happy hour during the workweek from 4 to 7 p.m., when mojitos go for $10 and the scene starts to feel less like a hotel bar and more like a party someone forgot to keep private.
Locals can snag day passes through ResortPass—$50 gets you pool and gym access, and the illusion of being a guest at a hotel you didn’t actually check into.
Vista is open daily, until 10 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday and midnight Thursday through Saturday. It’s the kind of place you casually wander into and accidentally spend three hours at. Which, in Miami, is about the best you can ask for.
More info at the Novotel website or @Vista_RooftopBar on Instagram.
