What Happened to Casual Tap After Bar Rescue? (Chicago, IL)

Casual Tap, a neighborhood bar in Chicago's Portage Park neighborhood, was featured in the July 2017 episode "Casually Tapped Out." Owner Steve Magana worked full-time as a Chicago firefighter and had let the bar, built in 1953, sit closed by the time Bar Rescue got involved -- an unusual starting point for the show, which typically works with bars that are still open but struggling. The episode framed Magana as burned out from balancing firefighting with bar ownership, and Jon Taffer's task was less about fixing a failing operation in real time and more about helping Magana find the motivation to reopen the business at all.

Taffer and his team worked with Magana on a renovation of the space and a refreshed concept, aiming to have Casual Tap reopened in time for the episode's television premiere. That timeline did not hold: according to contemporaneous coverage from 2paragraphs.com, Casual Tap remained closed roughly ten months after the Bar Rescue visit, well past the point Magana had originally targeted for reopening. Since then, reporting on Casual Tap's status has been inconsistent. Yelp's business listing for the bar, updated as of July 2026, currently shows the business marked closed.

However, a separate restaurant directory listing for the same Montrose Avenue address shows posted weekly operating hours without any closure notice, and online commentary from bar-rescue fan sites has noted that Google's own listing for the business is no longer marked closed, in contrast to Yelp. Because these sources point in different directions and no single dated, independent confirmation of either a reopening or a permanent closure was found, the bar's current operating status could not be reliably determined during this research pass. Given Casual Tap's unusual starting point -- already closed before the show even arrived -- and the conflicting signals about whether it ever fully reopened and stayed open, this record reflects genuine uncertainty about its status as of 2026 rather than a confirmed open or closed outcome, and it should be treated as a priority for a fresh, direct check before it is presented as settled in either direction.