Photo: Denver Post
"South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone had no idea when Casa Bonita is opening nearly a year after purchasing the iconic Lakewood restaurant.
The Denver Post recently interviewed the comedy duo about how the project's going, and they admit they didn't know what they were getting themselves into.
“Have you ever seen ‘Kitchen Nightmares’? It’s the very, very worst one of those you could possibly ever imagine,” Parker told reporters. “What we thought would be, ‘Oh this will be cool. We can buy this and open it and it’ll be around again,’ turned into ‘Oh this is going to be what we have to put all our money into and hope that it works.’”
The restaurant has been undergoing heavy construction and renovations for months now, according to the Post. Stone and Parker said the previous owners "severely neglected" the Colorado landmark, and they've had to update plumbing, electrical, gas lines, and other systems.
“The previous owners deferred maintenance in an almost superhuman way,” Stone claims. “They just didn’t take care of anything. And they ran it completely into the ground.”
The "South Park" creators featured Casa Bonita in their hit show back in 2003, skyrocketing the local icon into national popularity. After the restaurant closed in 2020 due to pandemic struggles, Parker and Stone offered to buy it for $3.1 million. There was some community pushback over the $3.1 million purchase, but they ultimately sealed the deal in November 2021.
“Anyone else that’s said, ‘Oh I wanted to buy Casa Bonita,’ they wouldn’t have made it because this is going to cost so much and it’s really dumb,” Parker says. “We absolutely should bail and stop spending money, but we’re committed now.”
He continues: "We don’t have any money left over. It’s all going into Casa Bonita."
Despite the challenges, the duo plans on modernizing Casa Bonita into a bigger and better restaurant and entertainment venue. There's no reopening date as of right now.