New venues
South Florida offerings to bring tacos, classic cocktails.
Rank and File Social Club, a live-music venue and bar touting new twists on classic cocktails, this fall will join the rising nightlife scene in Fort Lauderdale’s Flagler Village.
The 3,000-square-foot bar and garden patio at 702 NE First Ave., opening in early October, comes from hospitality veterans and brothers Mark and Stefano Barbagallo, who say Rank and File will salute Flagler Village locals with “a neighborhood-bar vibe.”
“We’re bringing back the old-school bartender, and what he used to stand for: your bartender, your therapist, your best friend,” says Stefano Barbagallo, a former director of the Connecticut-based Barteca Restaurant Group. “We’re going to stick to the classics, like a perfect old-fashioned, in great glassware, with a mixology twist.”
What that “mixology twist” will entail will be entrusted to Rank and File’s squad of not-yet-hired bartenders, Barbagallo says, but will include gin and tonics and daiquiris costing $10 or less. “The idea is to get you coming in two or three times a week,” he says.
The bar will share the same warehouse as Chops and Hops, a recently announced ax-throwing bar debuting this September.
Vintage motorcycles, leather-bound books and other nostalgic decor will adorn Rank and File, as will oldschool video-game systems, board games and pub darts on the garden patio, adds Mark Barbagallo, by day a Miami DJ who has spun records for the Miami Dolphins and at several Fort Lauderdale bars.
Rank and File has not finalized its music program, but it will lean heavily on local bands, Barbagallo says.
Three taco joints opening in South Florida this year
The first South Florida outpost of Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, a national chain of Baja-style Mexican cantinas with 164 locations across the country, will open this fall.
Fuzzy’s (854 W. Cypress Creek Road, Fort Lauderdale) will come from Miramar resident Malik Mistry, a first-time restaurant owner. The Fuzzy’s chain — think Chipotle with a breakfast menu — specializes in jumbo burritos and Baja-style tacos, offering a choice of chicken, brisket, ground beef, pork and tempura fish. Its breakfast menu will include huevos rancheros and breakfast tacos stuffed with choice of eggs, bacon, cheese, potatoes, chorizo and shrimp.
Speaking of Tex-Mex chains, the Austin, Texas-based Chuy’s will open two more locations in Miami-Dade County, joining a Doral location that debuted in March.
First, a Kendall location at 8945 SW 162 Ave., will open July 24, to coincide with National Tequila Day, when the restaurant will give away free Chuy’s food for a year to the first 50 customers standing in line at 11 a.m. The second Chuy’s will open at 7705 W. Flagler St., sometime in August, according to a press statement.
The Chuy’s chain, to the uninitiated, is home to Elvis Presley shrines, hubcap ceiling decor and mammoth burritos, such as the Big As Yo’ Face Burrito.