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Colorado’s defining options embody wonderful mountain peaks, vivid seasonal colours, snowboarding and a widespread compulsion to train and eat nicely. But for generations of Colorado kids, arguably essentially 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. ft in Lakewood, a Denver suburb — served steamed refried beans, tacos and enchiladas to hundreds 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 typically 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 commonly requested whether or not such a spot really existed. “Oh, that’s a place,” Mr. Parker would reply, he mentioned lately. “It’s crazy. It’s weird.” 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 in regards to the meals had earned it the nickname Casa NoEata. Still, its passing was mourned.
But within the coming weeks, the large 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 thing the identical, besides now sanitary.
“It doesn’t stink like chlorine anymore,” Mr. Stone mentioned in an interview in late May, through the closing, frantic stretch to reopen. “We could have rebuilt this twice as big, for half as much money, but we spent so much restoring it, like a piece of art.”
Mr. Parker added: “And the food is excellent.”
Indeed, Casa Bonita returns as one of many greatest Mexican eating places on the planet, and the brand new government chef, Dana Rodriguez, is a six-time James Beard Award nominee. Local followers of Casa Bonita communicate of the reopening as if the beloved “Orange Crush” Denver Broncos of 1977 had been revived from a cryogenic state. More than 100,000 potential clients have signed up on the restaurant’s web site to make a reservation, Mr. Stone mentioned.
“It’s its own Colorado thing,” mentioned Rick Johnson final Friday evening, when some 400 visitors have been invited for a check 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 certain places that bring you back — that bring 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 more 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. Every 20 minutes, divers splashed from fake cliffs right into a blue pool.
“This 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. These days, Mr. Stone mentioned, the funding was nearer to “infinity dollars.”
As Mr. Parker put it, “It would be way cheaper if we just went hang gliding over volcanoes.”
The Danger Room
Casa Bonita occupies a constructing coloured a signature pink that looms like a flamingo’s neck over an out of doors purchasing complicated; different tenants embody a Dollar Store, a Ross Dress for Less, an H&R Block and a coin-operated laundry. The restaurant first opened to the general public on the identical spot in 1974, patterned after one other with the identical title, and the identical proprietor, that had opened in Oklahoma City a couple of years earlier.
Finding the fitting shade of pink was one of many extra benign refurbishing challenges, however nonetheless demanding. “Twenty seven different tries,” mentioned Scott Shoemaker, who has overseen the renovations. Finding the fitting shade of gold for the lettering took 9. Some options, just like the 4 faux deciduous bushes and the 62 faux palm bushes contained in the restaurant, may merely be touched up: faux leaves eliminated, cleaned, bushes repainted, leaves reattached.
“There aren’t many construction projects where you have to re-frond the palms,” Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. “Which is the name of my new band.”
Other 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, may solely exit via a 30-inch-wide underwater tunnel brimming with pipes, Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. Then they emerged from the water into {an electrical} room.
“There were 200 amps of power directly to the left,” Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. “When I saw it, I called Matt and told him, ‘This is the most dangerous room I’ve ever seen.’”
(They have heard no stories of accidents.) The renovated pool, 14 ft deep, resembles the outdated one however offers the divers with a wider, relocated exit, amongst different modifications.
Other modifications might be extra evident to clients. There are 4 new bars. A brand new indoor ticketing plaza, meant to recall a road in Oaxaca, provides 4,000 sq. ft and is meant to scale back ready occasions earlier than sitting down and consuming. Some points of interest, 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 weird pirate and a bank robber,” mentioned Chris Brion, the artistic director of each “South Park” and Casa Bonita, and who goes by the nickname Crispy. “He was an amalgam of 16 different comical bad guys.” The new Black Bart, he mentioned, was based mostly on “the actual character who robbed stage coaches.”
But 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 a lot about it: We know how to clean this up, narratively,” Mr. Parker mentioned. But they opted in opposition to, he mentioned, and as a substitute embraced a unifying theme of exploration.
“It’s about discovery,” he mentioned. “Little kids like to say, ‘What’s in that hole?’ There’s a lot 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 got to be a place in hell for people who serve food like that,” mentioned Victoria Gagnon, 57; she mentioned she and her household bought 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 development employee, acquired his pay, the household voted on the place to dine. “Hands down, Casa Bonita,” Ms. Gagnon mentioned. “I know it sounds corny.”
During the demolition part, one explanation for Casa Bonita’s subpar delicacies turned clear. “There were no ovens, no range tops,” Mr. Stone mentioned. “It was all steamers. They steamed everything.”
There have been different surprises. The outdated gasoline strains leaked, and the gasoline service to the constructing needed to be redone. All the drains had been plumbed improperly, permitting cooking grease to “get into the city wastewater,” Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. The record went on.
The high quality of the meals, not less than, 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 ascertain 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 below new possession, she utilized for the highest job. “Now am I qualified?” she mentioned she had requested.
Her kitchen workers, numbering 110, will prepare dinner every thing from scratch, in a contemporary, stainless-steel kitchen constructed to supply enormous portions. One hundred and ninety-eight gallons of mole sauce might be made for the rooster, each evening. Also: 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 workforce mentioned they have been nonetheless understanding the pricing, an space of uncertainty that mirrored their inexperience in operating a restaurant. “What we’ve come to realize over the last couple of months is, now we have a lot of work to do to make it a sustainable business,” Mr. Parker mentioned.
Not to say balancing the burden 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 worth infinity dollars.”
Audio produced by Jack D’Isidoro.