'Bar Rescue' clients give up on Taffer's changes

Your restaurant or bar has fallen on hard times. You feel compelled to put your sagging fortunes into the hands of an expert with a reality show.

The expert moves in, does poignant interviews with owners and staff, seizes upon the problems, performs renovations and reopens the place to fanfare.

And sometimes the bar owners turn around and say "yeccch."

Two local bars visited last month by Spike TV's Jon Taffer for Bar Rescue appear to be doing just that.

The former Lickety Split - a two-level pizzeria and bar at Fourth and South Streets - is downplaying its Taffer-developed "Alleged Pizza" motif. Management stripped away the Alleged window decorations and restored the TV that blares ESPN. On the second floor, renamed 2nd State Lounge, drink specials are gone and comedy nights and music acts have been reinstituted.

In Glenside, Taffer redid Plush Nightspot into an Italian bar called Osteria Calabria. From Day One, staff referred to it as "O.C." The other night, according to Facebook, the former bar was reinstalled.

Management is not talking - most likely since nondisclosure agreements are still in force because the episodes have not yet been shown.

Spike has scheduled Lickety Split's Bar Rescue episode for Nov. 9 and Plush's on Nov. 16.

It is possible that Taffer and/or cameras will return to the joints in the interim to capture more drama.

In other restaurant-remake news: Villari's Milmarian - the landmark on Route 73 in Palmyra - is no more. Owner Paul Villari III is changing the Italian restaurant into a sports bar called Jerseys Pub. Villari's was Robert Irvine's very first Restaurant Impossible episode when it was first shown in 2011. When Irvine visited in May 2010, he ripped out the carpets and streamlined the menu. The place seems untouched since then.