barBar Rescue · Season 3, Episode 5 · Aired March 10, 2013
Zanzbar
Denver, Colorado
Good outcome here: the business is still trading today. It trades today as Zanzibar Billiards.
On the show
Season 3, Episode 5 · March 10, 2013 · bar
Revisited in Back to the Bar: Hot-Headed Owners (S4E19, aired 2015-04-05) as Zanzbar; Revisited in Back to the Bar: Drunky McDrunkerton Returns (S5E13, aired 2016-11-20) as Zanzbar; Revisited in Back to the Bar: Flying Fists and Bar Brawls (S5E25, aired 2017-07-30) as Zanzbar
What happened after
Actual business name is 'Zanzibar Billiards' (2046 Larimer St, downtown Denver); owner Ami Benari kept the Zanzibar name rather than Taffer's suggested 'Solids and Stripes' rebrand. Still operating.
What happened on the show
A prideful, stubborn owner desperate to keep his bar breathing handed Taffer a real face-off in Denver. Zanzbar had thrived until a car crash years earlier sidelined its owner, and the staff he left in charge failed to hold the room together while he recovered, sending the business into a slide he was now too proud to admit. Much of the episode became a contest of wills, Taffer trying to get a man defined by his own ego to concede that the place needed help at all. The bar was a pool hall at heart, and Taffer reworked the room around that strength while proposing a rebrand to Solids and Stripes to sharpen its billiards identity. The friction never fully cleared, which set up the rescue's central question: whether an owner this invested in being right could accept a new name and a new plan, or whether his pride would win out over the very changes meant to save what the accident had nearly cost him.
After the cameras left
The owner won the naming fight and kept the business alive. Ami Benari rejected Taffer's Solids and Stripes and held onto the Zanzibar name, and the bar, formally Zanzibar Billiards at 2046 Larimer Street in downtown Denver, is still operating. It runs twelve billiards tables, a full bar and a patio, with active Facebook and Instagram presences, giving the open call high-confidence footing. A stubborn owner who dug in on his own name turned out to be right about it.
Sources
Confidence: high. Last checked 2026-07-19.