Bar Rescue · S3 E2
Headhunters
Austin, Texas
This one did not make it. The business closed.
The short answer
At 720 Red River St; renamed 'Metal & Lace' (steampunk theme) after its Season 3 Bar Rescue episode. Now closed.
What happened on the show
Taffer walked into a roach-infested Austin bar and an owner who flatly refused to pay his own employees. Headhunters, at 720 Red River Street, tested his patience enough that he broke from the usual playbook: rather than send Nicole in alone for recon, he and his experts went in with her, after taking in both the ordinary customer experience and a genuinely disturbing concert the venue had hosted. The filth and the withheld wages made for a rescue that was ugly on every level, a room crawling with vermin run by a man who would not even meet payroll. Taffer fought both the infestation and the owner's stubbornness, then reopened the bar under a steampunk theme as Metal and Lace, a sharper identity for a Red River Street room that had squandered its spot in the city's live-music corridor. It remains one of the rare rescues where the owner never bothered to thank Taffer for the help, a fitting coda to an episode defined by his refusal to give ground.
After the cameras left
Metal and Lace has since closed. The Austin Chronicle's own venue-listing page for the Red River Street address displays a prominent closed tag, giving this one high-confidence sourcing from an established local outlet. An owner who would not pay his staff during the rescue and would not thank the man trying to save him made for poor odds, and the steampunk rebrand did not change the ending.
Location
Austin, Texas
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Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.