| | Thrillist Miami Tuesday August 25, 2009 Wet Lab
Wed, Thurs, 5pm to 9ish, or when business slows, Fri 4:30pm 'til 1-ish: 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway; Virginia Key, Miami; no phone
The most deliciously awesome bars can be hiding where you least expect them, like in an overlooked strip mall, or an overlooked Corolla that may or may not have belonged to your mom, and was hidden in her driveway. Or, tucked deep in a marine research campus, like Wet Lab.
Camouflaged by a research vessel, science labs, and the waters of Bear Cut, Wet Lab's embedded in the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Virginia Key, and provides the feeling of getting drunk in a school cafeteria, thanks to myriad kegs, a full/very cheap bar, foosball, and a pool table, plus a patio with vistas of the sunset over Biscayne Bay and a little beach with driftwood and scuttling crabs, which you have to expect, if you let your wood drift around long enough. To access the half-hidden joint, park inside the fenced lot just before the Bear Cut bridge, cruise south through campus into a marine supply lot full of buoys, head left till you see The Commons, where you'll walk through a foyer full of giant taxidermied fish...duh. Once safely inside, nothing's over $3, or $9 for a pitcher, like taps flowing with Sam Adams, Yuengling, and a rotating cast of micros including Rouge Hazelnut; off-taps include Dale's Pale Ale, Old Chub, Stone IPA, Saranac Pomegranate Wheat, Rogue Mocha Porter, Avery White Rascal, or a stout called Left Hand Milk, which you haven't tried since breaking your right one.
Booze comes cheap, too, with well drinks for $2.75 and premiums for $4.25. Wet Lab's also got a few eccentricities, like the fact that you can catch bull sharks from the beach below the patio, talk to grad-student patrons about stuff like the age rings inside a fish's ear, and its cash only-ness, which is exactly the way you rolled, when doling out your Mom's pilfered Kahlua.
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