While fresh ingredients, purées and high-end spirits are indisputable upgrades to artificial flavors whirled in a machine, other components work just fine in their current format. Strawberry and pineapple play beautifully together, and lime and coconut play beautifully together.” “All the flavors make sense together: Rum is in both drinks-that’s the through line. “Adding Strawberry Daiquiri to the blend, suddenly you create more balance, more interest,” he explains. Alone, a frozen Piña Colada can feel overly sweet, creamy and cloying. The two components have a natural affinity. 'Right now we just want to comfort our guests with pleasures.'įor Simó, the deliciousness of the drink is a no-brainer. 'In these weird times I'm inspired by things that are brainless enjoyment,' he says. At Cane & Table in New Orleans, where proprietor Kirk Estopinal is currently offering a made-from-scratch Miami Vice as a pandemic-era special, the drink likewise represents a welcome familiarity.

“It’s a guilty pleasure cocktail,” notes Naren Young, who migrated from New York to Miami in late 2020 to run Sweet Liberty. Yet, the drink still draws plenty of affection. She recalls making them nightly at a bar with only one blender, which necessitated making half of a blended Piña Colada, washing the blender, and then making half of a Strawberry Daiquiri. “Any bartender who has to make these by hand knows it’s a nightmare,” says Blakeley Mooney, a Memphis-based bartender. Even bartenders with nostalgia for enjoying the drink at resort bars acknowledge that it can be time-consuming, even annoying, to make from scratch. In general, the Miami Vice is best enjoyed at bars equipped with multiple slushy machines, where it can be assembled in a matter of seconds. It drinks like freakin’ velvet.” (His own Miami Vice hack: Blend with frozen fruit instead of ice to avoid watering down the drink.) “It doesn’t have that ice chunk graininess or come out like a slushy. The best Miami Vice, in Traxler’s opinion? Red Lobster. “I think we’re starting a rebellion against the pretension,” says Shaun Traxler, general manager of Vault in Fayetteville, Arkansas, who has even written a manifesto about his love for the Miami Vice: “Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT church up the Vice.” Some even insist that the drink is at its best in its artificially sweetened, Day-Glo glory, and revel in its kitsch appeal. On the whole, however, the Miami Vice has resisted attempts to go upscale. Around 2017 for example, the Broken Shaker Miami experimented with a version (no longer available) that featured fresh strawberries and unsweetened coconut cream. Since its popularization, there have been numerous attempts to elevate the formula. While it’s difficult to pinpoint where it started, it’s easy to see why it caught on quickly at beachside bars: “Combining the two became another menu item, without doing anything extra,” explains Simó.

Suddenly, Miami became this cool place, and someone named the drink after the show.” “Everyone wanted to dress like Crockett and Tubbs: the linen suits, the pastel T-shirts, the Ferrari Testarossa. “It was an influential TV show from a style perspective,” Simó recalls. But the drink’s name and identity crystallized in the 1980s, when the pastel glory of Miami Vice ruled the small screen from 1984 to 1989.

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