What Happened to New England's Ale House Grille After Bar Rescue?

The episode "Driving Miss Tara," which aired 2019-06-02, followed owner Tara Cook at New England's Ale House Grille in Palm Harbor, Florida, a single mother running the bar out of a converted historic schoolhouse building. According to the episode's synopsis, Cook had hired a general manager both to help save the struggling business and to fill a personal void, a decision the show suggested complicated the rescue as much as it helped. For recon, Jon Taffer watched alongside Cook rather than observing from a hidden vantage point, and brought in three Tampa Bay Buccaneers players, Beau Allen, Cameron Brate, and Ali Marpet, to pose as ordinary customers and test the staff.

Taffer's team rebuilt the bar around a German beer-hall concept, renaming it Das Brauhaus & Cafe, and outfitted it with a new draft system, updated kitchen equipment, and a redesigned dining room meant to draw on the building's old-schoolhouse character. The Tampa Bay Times covered the reopened concept in a bar review published in early May 2019, describing the beer program built around the new German theme. The turnaround was short-lived. According to Creative Loafing Tampa (2019-05-06), owner Tara Cook announced on Facebook that Sunday, May 12, 2019, would be Das Brauhaus's last day open, just weeks before the episode featuring the same relaunch aired on television.

Cook cited personal strain following the end of her marriage and said she needed to focus on raising her children as a single parent after six years running the business. The restaurant closed out its run by hosting a charity 5K run over Mother's Day weekend rather than a somber final service. The schoolhouse building did not sit empty for long. Local coverage in the Tampa Bay area reported that a Wings Etc. Grill & Pub franchise, described as the chain's first Florida location, later opened at the same Alternate U.S. 19 address.

That business has since also been listed as closed on a review-site update dated 2025, and no bar or restaurant currently operating under any name has been confirmed at the address as of this research. The property's history now spans three distinct businesses in under a decade: the original ale house, the short-lived Das Brauhaus rebrand, and the Wings Etc. franchise that followed.