A boutique hotel from a Miami celebrity chef has arrived in South Beach
The new hotel Casa Cañita is easy to miss. There’s no lobby entrance, and all Ocean Drive strollers can see is a touristy-looking restaurant.
But turn onto 12th Street, walk about 20 yards and enter what seems like a small office. You’ve arrived at what owners are hoping will be the area’s region’s next hip hotel.
The hotel, formerly the Roami, has only 24 rooms and few amenities. But it evokes simplicity.
While the place may be inconspicuous, one of its owners is well-known, in the 305 and beyond. She even has her own television show.
Celebrity chef Michelle Bernstein is making her first foray as a hotel owner. This comes after starting several restaurants.
Casa Cañita, 1200 Ocean Dr in Miami Beach, was set to open on Friday. The upper end price for a standard room at the boutique hotel is $320 per night.
Inside the South Beach hotel
As the name suggests, the hotel promotes the cultural legacy of sugarcane, “inspired by Cuba’s Golden Age,” and interpreted through modern Miami Beach, a brochure says. That means influences of sugar-producing countries. For example, handmade chairs from Nicaragua, can be found in the hotel.
Twenty of the 24 rooms have single king beds. There’s one spacious two-bedroom suite overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Velvet beds stand on wooden legs coated in coral tones. Hallways are filled with tropical prints.
Hotel guests will also be offered private cigar rolling sessions, cocktail-making classes and salsa and dance classes.
What’s on the restaurant and bar menu?
Bernstein’s new place is a hotel — and a restaurant. This is the third La Cañita in the area. One opened in Bayfront Park in 2021 and a second one in Kendall in 2025. The Ocean Drive edition is the first to include a hotel. In addition to Bernstein, owners are David Martinez, Orestes Pajon and Davide Borgia.
Bernstein, a James Beard Award-winning chef who appears on the Food Network and South Florida PBS, and sister Nicolette Bernstein designed the hotel and restaurant.
The menu at the new La Cañita features Caribbean and Latin American influences, including croquetas, empanadas, slow-braised rope vieja and pulled oxtail pasta with truffle. Expect conch fritters and jerk-spiced chicken, too.
The bar will carry rum and spirits derived from sugarcane, and guava, passion fruit and mango mojitos.
Inside the restaurant is a small stage that will feature live music every evening. Expect to hear maracas, flutes, guitars and percussion. But guests who may be feeling tired, or may still want to practice their dance moves in private, can stay in their rooms and stream the shows in bed from a flat-screen TV.
“From sugarcane comes rum, from rum comes music, and from music comes connection,” says a hotel brochure. “This project is about bringing that story to life in a way that feels layered, personal, and entirely immersive.”
Take a tour of the South Beach hotel
