TV Restaurants

What Happened to Heat Restaurant & Lounge After Bar Rescue?

Closed verified

As of September 2026, Heat Restaurant & Lounge has closed — confirmed via cltampa.com, August 2, 2025.

Primary source
cltampa.com ·

Last verified

What the source shows: Creative Loafing Tampa reported Heat Restaurant & Lounge (renamed Club Ele during its Bar Rescue makeover) was permanently closed by 2015, with a Peruvian-Cuban restaurant, Cabo Blanco, now occupying the address.

  • Season / episode Season 4, Episode 14
  • Original air date
  • Address 1936 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, FL 33020

Interactive map — loads when you ask for it.

Everything on this map is also in the list below.

© OpenStreetMap contributors © CARTO

What happened after Bar Rescue?

Heat Restaurant & Lounge opened in Hollywood, Florida in 2012, run by owners Vin Durand and Vanessa Santos, and initially did well, taking in an estimated $10,000 to $15,000 a week. Competition in the busy Downtown Hollywood nightlife district eventually caught up with the business, which is what brought Bar Rescue's crew in to film "All Twerk & No Pay" (aired March 1, 2015). Despite having "restaurant" in its name, the bar's kitchen sat largely unused, and bartenders had taken to dancing on top of the bar for tips rather than focusing on service. Jon Taffer's team worked to get the kitchen functioning, taught the bartenders new drink recipes, and carried out a broader renovation, relaunching the business as Club Ele (also referred to as Ele Lounge). Six weeks after the visit, the show reported that happy-hour sales had doubled and late-night sales were also up substantially compared with before the changes. That improvement did not hold: according to Creative Loafing Tampa, the bar was permanently closed by 2015, and a Peruvian and Cuban restaurant called Cabo Blanco has since taken over the address. The closure came within roughly a year of Jon Taffer's visit, one of several Bar Rescue makeovers in the competitive Hollywood, Florida bar scene that did not sustain their post-rescue gains. No reporting located for this update attributes the closure to any single cause beyond the intense competition among nightlife venues in the immediate area, and no subsequent coverage indicates the Heat or Club Ele names have returned to the address in any form since Cabo Blanco's opening. Of the two Hollywood, Florida bars featured in this batch, Heat's roughly one-year post-rescue run was notably shorter than the decade Toucans Oceanside Bar & Grill spent operating down the boardwalk under its own post-rescue name before that business, too, eventually stopped operating.

Featured on Bar Rescue

Season / episode
Season 4, Episode 14
Original air date
Episode title
All Twerk & No Pay
What was featured
kitchen overhaul of a bar with an unused kitchen
Role
Featured restaurant
Name on the broadcast
Heat Restaurant & Lounge

Frequently asked questions

Is Heat Restaurant & Lounge still open in 2026?

As of September 2026, Heat Restaurant & Lounge has closed — confirmed via cltampa.com, August 2, 2025.

What happened to Heat Restaurant & Lounge after Bar Rescue?

Heat Restaurant & Lounge opened in Hollywood, Florida in 2012, run by owners Vin Durand and Vanessa Santos, and initially did well, taking in an estimated $10,000 to $15,000 a week. As of September 2026, Heat Restaurant & Lounge has closed — confirmed via cltampa.com, August 2, 2025.

Is Heat Restaurant & Lounge permanently closed?

As of September 2026, Heat Restaurant & Lounge has closed — confirmed via cltampa.com, August 2, 2025. We publish a closure only with a dated source behind it, and we say plainly when it has not been independently confirmed.

Where is Heat Restaurant & Lounge located?

1936 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, FL 33020. That is the address on the record as of September 7, 2026.

What season and episode of Bar Rescue featured Heat Restaurant & Lounge?

Season 4, Episode 14 of Bar Rescue, first aired March 1, 2015. The episode is titled “All Twerk & No Pay”.

Did the makeover last at Heat Restaurant & Lounge?

The episode first aired March 1, 2015. Our most recent check was September 7, 2026 — 11 years later —: As of September 2026, Heat Restaurant & Lounge has closed — confirmed via cltampa.com, August 2, 2025.

Every status on this site carries a confidence label and a date, and names the source it rests on. Read the Editorial & Corrections Policy for what each label means and how quickly we act on corrections. The questions above are generated from this record's own published fields — we never publish a question we cannot answer from the data.

More from Bar Rescue

Every Bar Rescue restaurant we track

Other TV restaurants in Florida

All Florida locations

Nearest tracked restaurants

Visit info

Address
1936 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, FL 33020
Venue type
bar
Official website
None found

Businesses change fast. Always confirm directly with the restaurant — call ahead, or check its own current website or social media — before making plans around anything on this page.

Sources

  • cltampa.com — https://www.cltampa.com/food-drink/heres-what-happened-to-every-florida-bar-featured-on-bar-rescue-12386627/

See something wrong?

We work hard to keep every status accurate and dated, but restaurants change fast and our sources aren't perfect. If something here is wrong — a status, a name, an address, anything — tell us what you're seeing and where you saw it, and we'll check it.

See something wrong? Tell us →

Share this page

Record br-074 · last verified .