Colorado’s Fabled Casa Bonita: South Park Creators Pour $40M Into Rebuild

Colorado’s defining options embody wonderful mountain peaks, vivid seasonal colours, snowboarding and a widespread compulsion to train and eat properly. However for generations of Colorado kids, arguably probably the most generally shared expertise concerned Casa Bonita, an enormous, filthy, poorly-lit, underground restaurant with meals that many diners deemed barely edible.

Casa Bonita — then sprawling over 52,000 sq. toes in Lakewood, a Denver suburb — served steamed refried beans, tacos and enchiladas to 1000’s of individuals a day, buffet-style. The dinner leisure was a toddler’s fever dream: waterfalls, cliff divers, Black Bart’s Cave, fake gold and silver mines, puppet exhibits and an individual in a gorilla costume chased by a sheriff, who generally joined within the cliff diving. Casa Bonita’s curious childhood grip was chronicled in an episode of “South Park.”

After that episode ran, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the present’s creators, have been repeatedly requested whether or not such a spot really existed. “Oh, that’s a spot,” Mr. Parker would reply, he mentioned not too long ago. “It’s loopy. It’s bizarre.” Like so many Colorado kids, Mr. Parker had held his birthday events there.

Then, in 2020, Casa Bonita went bankrupt, hit by the pandemic stoop. The place was already in disrepair, crumbling from deferred upkeep, rife with electrical hazards, the air flow techniques coated with grease and the carpet encrusted into one thing like concrete. The jokes concerning the meals had earned it the nickname Casa NoEata. Nonetheless, its passing was mourned.

However within the coming weeks, the big casita will reopen with new homeowners: Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone, each native Coloradans, who’ve spent upward of $40 million to tear it down, rebuild it and, they joke, to maintain every little thing the identical, besides now sanitary.

“It doesn’t stink like chlorine anymore,” Mr. Stone mentioned in an interview in late Could, throughout the closing, frantic stretch to reopen. “We might have rebuilt this twice as massive, for half as a lot cash, however we spent a lot restoring it, like a bit of artwork.”

Mr. Parker added: “And the meals is superb.”

Certainly, Casa Bonita returns as one of many largest Mexican eating places on this planet, and the brand new govt chef, Dana Rodriguez, is a six-time James Beard Award nominee. Native followers of Casa Bonita converse of the reopening as if the beloved “Orange Crush” Denver Broncos of 1977 had been revived from a cryogenic state. Greater than 100,000 potential clients have signed up on the restaurant’s web site to make a reservation, Mr. Stone mentioned.

“It’s its personal Colorado factor,” mentioned Rick Johnson final Friday evening, when some 400 company have been invited for a take a look at run, within the firm of Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker. Mr. Johnson, 44, had come to the restaurant as a toddler and had now introduced his personal sons. “There are these sure locations that deliver you again — that deliver the nostalgia,” he mentioned.

His son Isaac, 10, was struck by his father’s enthusiasm. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him extra excited,” he mentioned.

Isaac had simply joined a dozen different kids watching a puppet present, throughout which a pleasant taco puppet launched a somber burrito puppet that sang an Italian aria. The puppet stage was tucked subsequent to Black Bart’s Cave, a windy maze minded by two skeletons. Steps away, the mercado offered Casa Bonita T-shirts, mugs and different trinkets. Each 20 minutes, divers splashed from fake cliffs right into a blue pool.

“That is heaven on Earth,” Isaac mentioned.

Mr. Stone, smiling, took in a mariachi band close to the bar. The unique value of renovations was projected at $10 million. When the determine reached $20 million, enterprise advisers inspired Mr. Stone and Mr. Parker to pack it in. As of late, Mr. Stone mentioned, the funding was nearer to “infinity {dollars}.”

As Mr. Parker put it, “It could be method cheaper if we simply went hold gliding over volcanoes.”

The Hazard Room

Casa Bonita occupies a constructing coloured a signature pink that looms like a flamingo’s neck over an out of doors purchasing advanced; different tenants embody a Greenback Retailer, a Ross Costume for Much less, an H&R Block and a coin-operated laundry. The restaurant first opened to the general public on the similar spot in 1974, patterned after one other with the identical identify, and the identical proprietor, that had opened in Oklahoma Metropolis just a few years earlier.

Discovering the fitting shade of pink was one of many extra benign refurbishing challenges, however nonetheless demanding. “Twenty seven completely different tries,” mentioned Scott Shoemaker, who has overseen the renovations. Discovering the fitting shade of gold for the lettering took 9. Some options, just like the 4 pretend deciduous bushes and the 62 pretend palm bushes contained in the restaurant, might merely be touched up: pretend leaves eliminated, cleaned, bushes repainted, leaves reattached.

“There aren’t many building tasks the place you must re-frond the palms,” Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. “Which is the identify of my new band.”

Different options, just like the outdated cliff-diving pool, have been precise bodily hazards. It turned out that divers, as soon as they leaped into the pool, might solely exit by a 30-inch-wide underwater tunnel brimming with pipes, Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. Then they emerged from the water into {an electrical} room.

“There have been 200 amps of energy on to the left,” Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. “After I noticed it, I known as Matt and advised him, ‘That is probably the most harmful room I’ve ever seen.’”

(They’ve heard no experiences of accidents.) The renovated pool, 14 toes deep, resembles the outdated one however supplies the divers with a wider, relocated exit, amongst different modifications.

Different modifications might be extra evident to clients. There are 4 new bars. A brand new indoor ticketing plaza, meant to recall a avenue in Oaxaca, provides 4,000 sq. toes and is meant to cut back ready occasions earlier than sitting down and consuming. Some sights, like Black Bart’s Cave, have acquired some narrative polish to assist them make precise sense.

The unique Black Bart character “was a cross between a bizarre pirate and a financial institution robber,” mentioned Chris Brion, the inventive director of each “South Park” and Casa Bonita, and who goes by the nickname Crispy. “He was an amalgam of 16 completely different comical unhealthy guys.” The brand new Black Bart, he mentioned, was primarily based on “the precise character who robbed stage coaches.”

However a part of Casa Bonita’s attraction was the thematic smorgasbord, and far of the unique weirdness has been left untouched. “We sat down and talked rather a lot about it: We all know learn how to clear this up, narratively,” Mr. Parker mentioned. However they opted in opposition to, he mentioned, and as a substitute embraced a unifying theme of exploration.

“It’s about discovery,” he mentioned. “Little children wish to say, ‘What’s in that gap?’ There’s a variety of that.”

Mole by Loca

The whimsy of the unique Casa Bonita was matched by culinary thriller: Why was the meals so-so at greatest? “There’s obtained to be a spot in hell for individuals who serve meals like that,” mentioned Victoria Gagnon, 57; she mentioned she and her household obtained meals poisoning after a go to to Casa Bonita in 2013.

Nonetheless, she mentioned, she was keen to return to her favourite childhood vacation spot. Years in the past, when her father, a building employee, acquired his pay, the household voted on the place to dine. “Palms down, Casa Bonita,” Ms. Gagnon mentioned. “I do know it sounds corny.”

Through the demolition part, one explanation for Casa Bonita’s subpar delicacies grew to become clear. “There have been no ovens, no vary tops,” Mr. Stone mentioned. “It was all steamers. They steamed every little thing.”

There have been different surprises. The outdated gasoline strains leaked, and the gasoline service to the constructing needed to be redone. All of the drains had been plumbed improperly, permitting cooking grease to “get into town wastewater,” Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. The record went on.

The standard of the meals, at the very least, is being addressed by Ms. Rodriguez, who is thought by the nickname Loca, owing to her relentless enthusiasm and her sailor’s vocabulary.

Ms. Rodriguez immigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1998, and utilized for her first job at Casa Bonita; she was turned down as being underqualified. She went on to determine and personal a number of celebrated eating places, together with Work & Class, in Denver, and has her personal Tequila model Doña Loca. In 2021, when she heard that Casa Bonita would possibly reopen beneath new possession, she utilized for the highest job. “Now am I certified?” she mentioned she had requested.

Her kitchen employees, numbering 110, will prepare dinner every little thing from scratch, in a contemporary, stainless-steel kitchen constructed to supply big portions. 100 and ninety-eight gallons of mole sauce might be made for the rooster, each evening. Additionally: enchiladas with purple and inexperienced sauce; inexperienced chile-braised brisket; chile relleno, with vegan and vegetarian choices, served with refried beans (not from a can, thanks very a lot) and rice; and naturally, sopaipillas with honey.

The Casa Bonita group mentioned they have been nonetheless understanding the pricing, an space of uncertainty that mirrored their inexperience in working a restaurant. “What we’ve come to appreciate during the last couple of months is, now we’ve a variety of work to do to make it a sustainable enterprise,” Mr. Parker mentioned.

To not point out balancing the load of custom and nostalgia, and their very own excessive expectations.

“It’s such a visceral place,” Mr. Parker mentioned. “That’s what I hope makes it so cool.”

Mr. Stone mentioned: “That’s value infinity {dollars}.”

Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro.