The quaint, little Mexican village — nestled under a starry night with daring cliff divers, a mariachi band and palm tree lined streets — is as cheesy as it is surreal, for a first-time Casa Bonita visitor.
I entered a skeptic, but left a fan.
Not because of the food. I wouldn’t go that far.
Having never eaten at the “Disneyland of Mexican restaurants” before South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone purchased Casa Bonita out of bankruptcy in 2021 for $3.1 million, I don’t have a frame of reference. While I don’t know firsthand how bad the food once was, I understand “horrible” is an apt description.
But this doesn’t mean that I didn’t go with expectations.
As my friend, Eliska Valko, said: “Coming from Texas, I have standards.”
So much has been said about the terrible food that, if I’m being honest, I was a bit nervous. My fears were amplified by our waitress, who recounted the patron that submitted a $596 doctor’s bill after eating at the iconic restaurant in the late ‘90s.
Don’t believe her?
The handwritten bill is memorialized behind a glass case in the restaurant’s museo.
I think it’s important to note here that, being a Texas girl, I am a hardcore Tex-Mex fan and as such, it doesn’t take much to disappoint me.
That aside, the food was edible — even if the enchiladas were so tough I struggled to cut them with a knife. This didn’t stop my friend, David Musgrave, though, from polishing off his plate of Christmas enchiladas, which are topped with red and green chili sauce.
I thought the hostess summed it up best: “The food is better than it used to be, but still not the main attraction.”
The sopapillas were the real winner, though.
“They’re still on point,” Musgrave said.
I personally would have preferred it if the waitress had left us a jar of honey and sprinkled the sopapillas with powdered sugar, but maybe that’s just me.
‘The Mexico vacation we wanted’
The prompt service and food delivery were surprising, but not nearly as astonishing as what I learned as we ate lunch last week from one of the private villas upstairs overlooking the cliffs. Casa Bonita used to use Cheez Whiz in its dishes.
Ugh.
I haven’t been so revolted since I learned the original Philly cheesesteak also came with fake globs of cheese.
Scoring a seat at the Casa Bonita table has proven difficult — if not impossible — for most, with frustrating comparisons to buying Taylor Swift during the Eras Tour or Super Bowl tickets.
But that’s about to change.
After more than a year hosting “invite-only” dinning, Casa Bonita is now accepting public reservations for October and beyond. Demand, however, has overwhelmed the restaurant’s reservation system with long queues and technical glitches, according to social media reports.
If not for Eliska and Josie Valko — the lucky winners of the restaurant’s godawful lottery system — I would still be waiting for the immersive experience that is Casa Bonita.
Given all the clamoring for the limited seats, imagine my surprise when I discovered the restaurant was littered with empty tables.
This remains a head scratcher. A Casa Bonita spokesperson decline to comment.
The available seats don’t even account for the table that’s perpetually taken by Eric Cartman, the foul-mouthed leader of the South Park boys. (Yes we mugged with him.)
In the days before the COVID-19 pandemic, the restaurant hosted about 5,000 visitors a day.
Today that number is closer to 3,000, staff members said.
There are other notable changes and not just the reservation system. Tips are expected to make a return and rumor has it that Executive Chef Dana “Loca” Rodriguez will add chicken tinga and nachos to the menu.
What I loved so much — especially when we added the colorful leis — was the vacation feel Casa Bonita has to offer. (And before you start giving me grief about the Hawaiian leis, the dancing gorilla got it!)
“It’s the Mexico vacation we wanted,” Eliska Valko said.
Musgrave didn’t miss a beat: “We didn’t even have to pack a suitcase.”
‘Get our money back’
Three days before we wound through the line inside to the entrance that transported me to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride, our group watched the documentary “¡Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” (A staffer joked she’s never seen Johnny Depp there.)
I’m so glad we did.
In just 88 minutes, we witnessed the $40 million transformation — the original budget was $6.5 million — from a 52,000 square-foot death trap “with 30 years of deferred maintenance” to Casa Bonita 2.0.
As the remodel price tag stacked up, it looked like the South Park duo might walk away from the project.
“Let’s return this and get our money back,” Stone joked.
They didn’t and Denverites today still have this piece of their childhood because of Parker’s crazy little dream to hang on to his own childhood memories roaming the labyrinth hallways of Casa Bonita.
“This is about kids,” Parker said.
Built in an old Joslyn’s department store in a Lakewood, Casa Bonita opened in 1974 as part of a chain of Mexican entertainment restaurants that started in Oklahoma City.
Pulling in to the parking lot, it does boggle the mind that Casa Bonita sits in a strip center with a Dollar Tree, coin laundry and Planet Fitness.
Josie Valko joked that we should have gone to Cicis Pizza instead.
Much of the South Park remodel maintains the restaurant’s cheeky authenticity, which was inspired by the cliff diving attraction in Acapulco, Mexico. It also retains many of the Gold-rush characters the Denver community has come to love including Black Bart and the dancing gorilla.
Look closer, though, and you’ll see that the dancing gorilla is actually ManBearPig. The character comes from a South Park episode in which former Vice-President-turned-climate-activist Al Gore tries to warn everyone about a creature called “ManBearPig,” an allegory for global warming.
We spent hours winding through what should be called a Mexican theme park with food taking in a puppet show adults can enjoy, stopping in the arcade’s shooting gallery, taking in a magic show. We even sat for a Taro card reading with a legit professional who’s been reading cards for a decade.
Josie Valko described — and I concur — the upgrade as “Vegas for kids.”
“I’m blown away,” said Josie Valko, who remembers Casa Bonita’s rundown days. “It looks different than I remember it, in a good way.”
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