Casa Bonita Guide

Casa Bonita opened in a Lakewood strip mall in 1974 as a pink-towered Mexican-food palace with a 30-foot indoor waterfall, cliff divers, gunfights, a haunted cave, and famously mediocre food — then it became a punchline, then a “South Park” episode, then it closed. In 2021 Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the South Park creators and Colorado natives, bought it and poured a reported $40 million-plus into the renovation, reopening it in 2023 with the divers back on the cliff and, for once, food people actually praise. It’s part dinner theater, part fever dream, and it is the most Colorado piece of kitsch there is — a place locals defend with a straight face.