The revival of Denver’s Casa Bonita, which was saved by Matt Stone and Trey Parker in 2021, still has thousands of fans clamoring to dine at the establishment.
The South Park creators, who bought the seemingly doomed Casa Bonita in 2021 and restored the business in time for its grand reopening in 2023, have got to be happy with the establishment’s strong first year into its revival.
However, the Mexican restaurant famous for being Eric Cartman’s favorite place to eat on the show has garnered criticism for just how long the waitlist to get inside the doors of Casa Bonita currently is.
The Denver restaurant is historically more famous for its gimmicks than its food - including a 30-foot manmade indoor waterfall cliff divers regularly launch themselves off and puppet shows - just like in South Park.
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This naturally has led to a lot of people wanting to check it out after it reopened last year.
The head chef of Casa Bonita, Dana Rodriguez, told Denver7 that the waitlist is still insanely long, with around 400,000 to 600,000 people awaiting their opportunity to eat at the much-loved destination.
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“I think everybody's happy and excited to see what the new owners have done,” Rodriguez said.
“We try to change nothing and improve everything and make sure when people just walk into the door, they want to come back.”
The absurdly long waitlist is perhaps the best problem to have for Stone and Parker, who have said their large investment into the restaurant would likely never be recouped.
The pair spent roughly $40 million on purchasing and restoring their beloved restaurant and have continued to spend even more on the high wages they pay their staff to disincentivize tipping at the establishment.
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And they serve an astonishing amount of food each day, as Casa Bonita’s head chef noted that the business makes roughly 2,500 sopapillas and runs through 200 pounds of dough every day.
While it isn’t six million people a night – which is roughly the amount of patrons that the South Park creators speculated would be needed for them to break even in an interview with The Today Show – the tremendous turnout makes the waitlist a bit more understandable.
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The question of whether or not Casa Bonita is worth the long wait is obviously up for debate, though a waitlist that long is likely to leave some disappointed by anything less than perfection.
However, considering Casa Bonita is still considered to be in a 'beta-testing' stage and is likely to continue to grow from this point forward, things are certainly looking good for the revitalized Denver restaurant.
Dylan Murray