Casa Bonita, the legendary Denver-area restaurant and entertainment complex, is perhaps one of America’s most surreal dining experiences. Its pink adobe façade rises unexpectedly over a nondescript shopping plaza, while inside visitors are greeted by a sensory overload: 30-foot waterfalls, neon light-adorned palm trees, wandering mariachis and the faint aroma of fried food and nostalgia. It's like someone took Elvis Presley’s 1963 “Fun in Acapulco” and smashed it together with a Chuck E. Cheese — just with more cliff diving and fewer animatronic nightmares.
In 2003, a whole nation of Americans living outside of Colorado discovered the wonder of Casa Bonita thanks to a seventh season-episode of “South Park,” which is best described as a subversive love letter to the restaurant. The plot revolves around Eric Cartman’s singular, increasingly desperate desire to experience the splendor (and sopapillas) of Casa Bonita, which in this universe operates as a shrine to the kind of spectacle that only exists when nostalgia meets capitalism and refuses to yield to taste.
