(keep reading to learn what happened)
Season: 9 | View All Season 9 Episodes
Original Episode Air Date: June 8, 2025
The Bar's Original Name Was: Swamp Tales
Swamp Town Cajun Kitchen Address: 7901 IL-127, Carlyle, IL 62231
Episode Recap
Swamp Tales (or Swamp Tails), later renamed to Swamp Town Cajun Kitchen and Cocktails, was a Carlyle, Illinois bar that was featured on Season 9 of Bar Rescue.
Though the Swamp Town Bar Rescue episode aired in June 2025, the actual filming and visit from Bar Rescue took place before that in July 2024.
It was Season 9 Episode 37 and the episode name was “Murky Waters at Swamp Tales”.
In this episode, Bar Rescue is headed back to Illinois.
More specifically, they’re in Carlyle Illinois to rescue a Cajun themed bar named Swamp Tales (AKA Swamp Tails).
If you’re not familiar with your Illinois geography, Carlyle is a small town in the south of the state.
The closest major city to it is actually St. Louis Missouri, which Bar Rescue has visited several times now.
Unfortunately, for this episode, I have to say “Bar Rescue” and not “Jon Taffer” because Taffer will not be leading the rescue.
Instead, Jason Santos will be the head rescuer for the Swamp Tales rescue.
The Swamp Tales bar really leans into the cajun theme, with lots of alligators all over the establishment, along with other animals like a turkey.
The spies find the animals to be a little odd.
To start, the spies try to order a Hurricane, which is a common New Orleans drink.
However, despite the bar’s cajun theme, it’s unable to serve up a Hurricane.
The spies try a daiquiri next, but also strike out on that.
They end up getting the bar’s specialty – “the fruit salad”.
Instead of having an actual jigger, the bartenders just use a plastic shot glass, which is pretty lame.
The drink just tastes like lemon lime soda instead of any alcohol.
Next, they order up some food – a salad and a “swamp sampler”.
When the chef cooks the shrimp for the swamp sampler, she just puts the raw shrimp directly in the dry flour bin, which contaminates the flour and is super gross.
The kitchen is also just generally disgusting, with food all over the floor, a filthy grill, and crusty stuff all over the squeeze bottles.
The fridge isn’t much better, with unlabeled containers that aren’t food grade.
This is all happening while the owners just hang out at the bar, completely clueless to what’s going on behind the scenes.
As always, I’m writing this recap the day before the episode airs on TV, so I don’t have all the details quite yet.
However, I do know the new name/concept that Jason Santos decided to put in.
While he did keep the cajun concept, he decided to change the name of the bar.
Jason switched it from Swamp Tales to Swamp Town Cajun Kitchen and Cocktails.
The bar got a brand new sign outside, as well as some other upgrades.
So – was the Swamp Tales Bar Rescue visit a long-term success?
Keep reading my update to learn what happened next and if this Carlyle Illinois bar is still open in 2025.
Swamp Town Cajun Kitchen Update - What Happened Next?
Now that I’ve recapped the episode, let’s talk about how the bar is doing after Jason Santos and his experts left Carlyle Illiniois.
I’ll start by talking about whether or not the bar is still open and using the concept from the show.
Then, I’ll look at some real customer reviews of the bar from after Jason’s rescue to give you an idea of how real customers are reacting to the show’s changes.
But first, I thought it was a bit interesting that the bar didn’t really seem to lean into or promote its Bar Rescue episode at all.
When the episode aired on TV, I checked the social media profiles to see if Swamp Town posted about it at all, but I didn’t see anything.
Let’s get into it…
Is Swamp Town still open after Bar Rescue?
As of my most recent check, Swamp Town is still open and serving customers in Carlyle, IL.
However, the bar seems to have gone back to using the original Swamp Tales name, rather than the new Swamp Town Cajun Kitchen name from the show.
For example, while the bar does have a website with the domain name of swamptowncarlyle.com, the website has gone back to calling the bar Swamp Tales Kitchen & Cocktail.
What’s more, the bar uses Swamp Tales on its Facebook page, including in the many promotional images that it posts on Facebook.
The bar’s Google Business listing also refers to it as Swamp Tales.
However, I did still see the Swamp Town sign up in some recent pictures, so I’m not sure whether they’re using both names or they just haven’t bothered to change the sign.
As far as I can tell, this change back seems to have happened pretty soon after the rescue.
On Facebook, the bar was already back to calling itself Swamp Tales just a couple of months after Jason Santos rescued it.
In terms of events, the bar seems to have a pretty consistent live music schedule, which is cool.
Here’s an example of a promo from May 2025:
They also had a BBQ cook off competition, which is another neat event.
The only other “regular” event that I can find is Taco Tuesday specials, where you can get $2 beef tacos and $2 canned beer, which seems like a pretty sweet deal.
Here’s a screenshot of part of the Swamp Tales menu so that you can get an idea of prices:
Here’s what the Swamp Tales location looks like in the most recent picture from Google Maps street view…
It hasn’t been updated since November 2023, so the pictures are from before the show.
I’m mainly just including it so that you can explore the area around the bar.
Swamp Town reviews after Bar Rescue
Next, let’s take a look at some real customer reviews for the bar to get a feel for how customers are liking the changes from Bar Rescue.
Overall, the bar has a 4.4 star rating on 728+ Google reviews but just a 3.7 star rating on 33+ Yelp reviews.
However, both of those numbers include reviews from both before and after the visit from Jason Santos.
As always, I try to exclusively look at reviews from after the bar was rescued.
When focusing only on reviews written after July 2024, I would say that they’re mostly positive, but still a bit mixed.
Unsurprisingly, people seem to be most interested in the alligator dishes, though I did see a few complaints of them being out of stock at various points.
Here’s a sampling of a few different reviews that I found on Google…
5 star Google review:
5 star Google review:
3 star Google review:
Final thoughts on the episode
Overall, the bar seems to be doing ok after the rescue.
However, as far as I can tell, they seem to have mostly gone back to using the original Swamp Tales name instead of the new Swamp Town name from Jason Santos.
That wraps up my Swamp Town Bar Rescue update.
If you want to see some other St. Louis area bars from the show, you also might be interested in my updates for The Airliner in East Alton, Pastimes on 4th / O’Kelleys, City Bistro / The Beechwood, and Crafted / Van Goghz Martini Bar.
And if you want to share your thoughts on Swamp Tales or this episode in general, you can do so using the comments section below.
As always – thanks for reading!
More Information
https://www.yelp.com/biz/swamp-tales-carlylehttps://www.facebook.com/SwampTalesCarlyle/
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Last updated: 2025-06-09 08:30
Bar Rescue is not as good as it used to be! John Tafer is the show! Without him it’s boring and uninteresting. My prediction is if John does not return the show will go the way the bars go that rescues. Down the tube.
He has done a few episodes. There have been several reasons floated; from logistical reasons saying they can do more episodes, to him being tied up with other projects, to him having health issues.
Why would a couple of farmers out in the country think they know better about the name? There is a science to marketing and branding. People go to school to learn it. The new name was not only better, it was an indicator that changes had been made without dumping the entire theme.
Always wondering why they don’t tell almost every bar to hire people with experience. Most every episode is full of people calling themselves bartenders but they are a joke. Real bartenders would not be that bad.
Never changed a bit. The ones on episode that needed fired still there. Had to ask for new menu within 2 weeks to even see it. Bayou Burger was amazing though. Went back a few weeks later again, couldnt even get served or waited on, left and went to Kretzers since Maya and Cloe couldnt be bothered with the 5 people at bar and only 2 in there to eat to come take order. Only thing keeping it going now is the weekend bands that the underage crowd flocks to.
I believe the show was exactly that, a reality TV show! For those that have ever had a chance to witness one filmed or put together, it’s all about the dramatic staging. They exaggerated the truth as I can tell. I was a customer before and after the show. The place has always had a great atmosphere and a different menu that you can’t get just anywhere. My hats off to the owners for continuing to push through like real businesses people do! ill continue to eat and drink at this great establishment!
I agree, yet the owner’s at Swamp Tails had no backbones and if Jon had gone he may have broke both their backs. Remember? These two drove all the way down South to pick up alligator meat to please their customers and then didn’t charge them for their efforts. And, why on God’s green earth did a ‘family’ member sell them that bar knowing it was going in the hole? If they had shown the female owner nod one more time I would have changed the channel. Too passive to be an owner of a bar. If they stay a restaurant, she’ll be happy waiting on tables the rest of her life. Took almost the whole show to get husband to take his hands out of his pockets. Sad. There’s a lot of that on farms but NOT in restaurants or bars. But, what do I know. Two nice ‘kids’ who will forever be working ‘their’ own tails off because someone in their family, who’s not helping them now, ripped them off and they are trying to save face by losing a large family farm over this. And, they just sat around not even looking concerned over losing that size of a farm. Wow, I’m afraid I’d be a bit more concerned than what I saw there.
Regarding the above about Taffer, he has stated on radio shows that he just doesn’t want to work as much. He mentioned that the travel is getting old, but at the same time, he seems to go to each of the general locations so it’s not like he did the St. Louis bars but not the Milwaukee ones. So I don’t think he travels less, per se.
Ratings are down, and he also said that he had done all of the Season 10 episodes thus far as of April. Let’s be honest, though, the show is already “down the tubes.” Paramount is just buying these as filler. It seems to be like the Simpsons at this point.
As to this bar, I feel a little bit bad for the owners. It’s similar to the rural bar west of Nashville that they did a few years back. The gator bites thing recurred from the Hope Mills, NC bar in the early days.
Santos is the only sub host who does it his own way and doesn’t really try to copy Jon. He actually behaves like a real restaurant owner, and it looked like he wasn’t just going bonkers like Spike does or is just a general a-hole like Phil.
3 episodes left in the season, probably until next year. They seem to have avoided putting the show up against the NFL lately.