(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: 9 | View All Season 9 Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: July 21, 2024
The Bar's Original Name Was: Nico's Bar and Grill
Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen and Bar Address: 22610 Loop 494 Kingwood, TX 77339
Episode Recap
Nico’s Bar and Grill, later renamed to Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen and Bar, was a Kingwood, Texas (Houston) bar that was featured on Season 9 of Bar Rescue.
Though the Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen Bar Rescue episode aired in July 2024, the actual filming and visit from Bar Rescue took place before that in March 2024.
It was Season 9 Episode 20 and the episode name was “Lost in the Sauce”.
In this episode, Jon Taffer is back rescuing bars in person.
Jon and his experts are heading to Kingwood, Texas.
They’re in town to help Nico’s Bar and Grill.
Based on Yelp reviews, it seems like Nico’s has been around since at least 2010, so it does have some decent history.
However, the bar is obviously struggling, which is why they need help from Jon Taffer and his experts.
Greg and Emmy Lee are the Nico’s owners.
During the recon, the spies discover that the bar has no cocktail menu.
As a result, they have to improvise with their orders.
Jon Taffer is in the building while this is happening.
Unsurprisingly, Jon takes issue with Greg’s approach to running the bar.
Instead of being hands-on, he’s more of the “drink at the bar”-type owners, which is unfortunately pretty common on the show.
During the recon, Jon Taffer really digs into the owner because the owner is just sitting at the bar drinking shots.
Jon gives him some tough love, but then brings it back down.
Jon tells the owner that Jon and Bar Rescue will leave town if they see Greg or Emmy have a single drink while filming.
After that, Jon Taffer starts inspecting the business, which mostly consists of him walking around and touching things.
While doing this, he finds issues with the tables and other details.
He then goes back into yelling at Greg, haha.
That’s all I have for the episode recap for now, as I’m writing this a day before the episode airs on TV.
However, I might come back and update this later.
I do know what Jon Taffer did in terms of the renovation, though.
As part of the changes, they changed the name from Nico’s Bar and Grill to Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen and Bar, or Kingwood NKB for short.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the new name, as it’s too long.
Saying the whole thing is a mouthful, but people also can’t call it just “Kingwood” because that’s literally the name of the city.
I guess people can call it “Kingwood N-K-B”, but that just seems awkward.
Oh well, what do I know? I’m certainly not a bar scientist.
So – was the Nico’s Bar Rescue visit a long-term success?
Keep reading my update to learn what happened next and if this Kingwood, TX bar is still open in 2024.
Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen and Bar Update - What Happened Next?
Now that I’ve recapped Bar Rescue’s visit to Nico’s, let’s talk about what happened to the bar after the show left town.
I’ll start by talking about whether it’s still open today and look at some real customer reviews from after the Bar Rescue visit.
I’ll also share any other interesting tidbits that I was able to uncover.
Let’s get into it…
Is Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen still open after Bar Rescue?
As of my most recent check, the bar is still open and serving customers in Kingwood, TX.
As far as I can tell, they seem to mostly be keeping the new name and concept from Jon Taffer.
However, their social media profiles still refer to the bar as Nico’s and they also seem to still refer to it as Nico’s in posts sometimes, too.
For example, in advertising the Bar Rescue Watch Party, they promote the bar as Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen & Bar (formerly Nico’s Bar and Grill).
But if you look at some other recent posts, they also refer to it as Nico’s
Overall, they seem to use the two names interchangeably, which might be a bit confusing to new customers, but is probably fine for regulars.
In terms of events, the bar seems to have a good assortment.
To start, they seem to have live music regularly.
Here’s an example:
In addition to the professional performers, the bar also has a karaoke night on Fridays.
They also seem to have karaoke on other nights sometimes, too.
There’s also a Bingo night every Wednesday.
In June, they posted about hiring, which seems like a good sign.
This post also uses both names for the bar, which again backs up my belief that they’re using both names interchangeably.
There’s also an official Nico’s website that doesn’t seem to have been updated since the change to Kingwood NKB.
Here’s what the bar’s location looks like in the most recent picture from Google Maps street view…
It hasn’t been updated since 2023, so it still includes the Nico’s concept.
I’m mainly including it so that you can explore the area around the bar.
Kingwood NKB reviews after Bar Rescue
Now, let’s take a look at some real customer reviews from after Jon Taffer’s visit so that we can see how customers feel about the changes and new concept.
On both Yelp and Google, the profile pages still use the original Nico’s name.
However, customers seem to be leaving reviews for Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen and Bar on those profiles still.
Overall, the bar has a 3.7 star rating on Yelp and a 4.1 star rating on Google.
Both those numbers include reviews from both before and after Taffer’s visit, though.
When looking exclusively at reviews from after the visit, I would say that they’re mostly positive.
There are a few negative reviews mixed in with people complaining about some bartenders.
Some people also complain about the changes.
But in general, I would say that most of the reviews are positive, which is a good sign.
People seem to like the pizza and generally like the staff.
Here are the two Yelp reviews that have been written after Taffer’s visit:
And then here’s a sampling of some of the Google reviews…
Three positive reviews from June/July 2024:
5 star Google review from May 2024:
Some reviews from right after the renovation:
2 star Google review from July 2024:
An anonymous forum commenter said the owners want to sell
I have no way to confirm this information, so take it with a grain of salt.
However, while I was researching this thread, I did come across this forum post from someone who claims that Greg has been wanting to sell the bar.
Here’s the full post:
Owners want to sell so Bar Rescue was the perfect avenue, have them come in spice up the spot and sell it.
Again, I have zero idea whether this is true or not.
But I will try to keep an eye on things to see if the ownership changes in the near future.
Final thoughts on the episode
So far, the bar seems to have mostly kept the new Kingwood Neapolitan Kitchen and Bar concept.
However, they also seem to still refer to it as Nico’s and use both names interchangeably.
They seem to have a good selection of events going on at the bar and recent customer reviews seem to mostly be positive.
Given that, I hope that the bar can stay open for a long time.
I will keep an eye on things to see if the bar gets sold, just in case that forum poster actually had some inside information.
That wraps up my full Nico’s Bar Rescue update.
If you want to see updates for some other bars in the Houston area, you also might be interested in my posts about Big W Cattle Co / Uncle Albert’s, Houston Sports Hub / The End Zone, and Wildcatter Saloon / Bryant’s Ice House.
I also have a page that lists all of the Texas episodes from the show.
And if you want to share your thoughts on the bar or the episode, you can do so using the comments section below.
As always – thanks for reading!
More Information
https://www.yelp.com/biz/nicos-bar-and-grill-kingwoodhttps://www.facebook.com/nicosbarandgrill
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Last updated: 2024-07-21 08:20
I’m only 10 minutes into the episode, and it’s already apparent why the show works with Jon and doesn’t with the stand-ins.
The entertainment value of Jon yelling and being animated at the beginning literally DEFINES Bar Rescue.
Jon goes crazy and then sits down and says, “We’re gonna eat.” lol. Never seen him do that before. I think he was eager to jump in and start yelling before any food/drinks could even come out and then had to do a part recon/part yelling at the owner again.