Trey Parker and Matt Stone, co-creators of the popular Comedy Central series South Park have announced that they have struck a deal to buy the beloved Colorado landmark, which is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They plan to reopen the restaurant.
The restaurant was featured in a classic South Park episode.
Awesome.
I went there once. I don’t remember a thing about the food.
To be fair though, I was much less adventurous with food back then.
We stopped to eat there on a class field trip back in 1986 when I was in fifth grade but I had pretty much forgotten about the place until I saw the South Park episode. I could hardly believe the place was still in business.
From what I can tell from the South Park episode and the stuff I’ve read recently about the place, that was pretty much always the case. They were going more for an experience than good food.
That said, there seems to be a decline in places like that, so it probably is a good investment to try and work on the food. Still, I think they’ll likely use a lot of their South Park branding to keep it going.
Or they might just be using the place as a rich-person hobby, and might not care as much about the bottom line.
They’ve said they’re going to try and renovate, improving the attractions and the food. So I suspect they’re at least going to make a try at profitability. And, with the South Park branding, I think they might be able to do it.
But, yeah, if it isn’t profitable, I think they’d keep it, as they really adore that place.
I only know of Casa Bonito from South Park and this is music to my ears. I hope they make it into a theme (south?!) park of sorts and can’t wait to visit after they make it theirs. I’m really happy for the success these guys have achieved lately.
It’s always been sort of an indoor theme park that happens to sell food. It’s the only restaurant I’ve ever been to where people go wandering around after they’ve eaten to see the other areas of the restaurant.
Never been to the place but in this respect, it sounds like a theme restaurant like Planet Hollywood or the Hard Rock Cafe. Such places aren’t really about the food, though they should emphasize that more.
They’re probably looking for an even remotely reasonable place to throw up 
I’ve been there for dinner twice. I can’t blame them for me going back. It was my own damned fault.
The food is/was terrible. It literally never made any sense to me.
I think Parker and Stone are onto that.
“Was it worth it?”
Totally
I like how meta it is. Life imitates art imitating life.
Now somebody needs to sell a restaurant called City Wok.
I predict an upcoming episode of South Park will involve Cartman owning Casa Bonita
People talking about the food, it’s even worse than that. Imagine the worse cafeteria/camp Mexican food and that’s what you get. The “shows” are cheesy and unentertaining. To have it reopen is an abomination unto God.
Of course, when they answer the phone, they must say, “Shitty Wok, would you like to try our shitty chicken?”
Casa Bonita was very popular in Little Rock for thirty years. I ate the all you can eat lunch buffet regularly. They closed in the mid 90’s.
I went to the one in Tulsa on a trip. Pretty sure it closed too.
People talk about how bad the food is, and is it ever bad. @Saint_Cad has it right, the shittiest of cafeteria food. That misses the point of the food. It is bad, but there is lots of it! You want another terrible bean burrito? They’ll bring you another one!
The one time I was there, it was a slow time for a late lunch, and the person taking the drink orders in the food line would take one person’s order (not one party’s), and then walk to the back to get the drink, bring one cup back, and then take the next. Even though the place was practically empty, it took 20 minutes to get through the food line to find a table.
Oh what memories. I came from a small town in South Dakota and was attending the state university. Our band had a concert tour that ended in Denver in 1977. Coming from a small farming town, it was quite an interesting trip. We stayed at the Radisson with the Playboy club on the top floor. It was also the first time I saw one of our male students made up as female to attend a party that was a long time in the planning; (s)he looked good!
Anyway, one of our evenings was free so a bunch of us were talked into going to Casa Bonita. I remember the food was blah, but the concept was really interesting to us “kids” (and we were kids). The cliff divers! The Mariachi band! The caves to explore! My best buddy went in to get a old-timey picture, with us dressed and posing as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; I still have that picture. It was lots of fun for us.
About 20 years ago we took our kids to Casa Bonita. It seemed a lot smaller, the food even worse, and our kids weren’t as excited about it as I was. Maybe I wasn’t as jaded…