I am usually loathe to give a restaurant review here in these pages, and not only because 99% of my readership lives nowhere near the West Colfax location of Casa Bonita in Lakewood.
Fact is, I have never eaten there, though the garage that did the engine rebuild on my 23 year old Chrysler is situated in an alley just a block or so away from where Casa Bonita sits in a strip mall. Fact also is that if I want down home Mexican, I’m much more likely to visit Los Dos Potrillos, which is much closer to home. And for more upscale Mexican, nothing beats Palenque Cocina y Agaveria in downtown Littleton. But still, for South Park kitsch – and cliff divers with six-pack abs – you could do worse than Casa Bonita. Much worse. And, of course, there’s always the complimentary sopapillas. Intrigued? DP review is here. Excerpt is below.
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Like many people, Dana Rodriguez stayed away from the Tex-Mex platters when she used to go to Casa Bonita, filling up on margaritas and sopapillas instead. “The food was really secondary,” she said about her visits to the famed Lakewood restaurant and entertainment venue. “We either ate before or after.” But after new owners and “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker hired Rodriguez, a four-time James Beard-nominated Denver chef, to revamp the menu and run the kitchen, she is ready to change Casa Bonita’s notorious reputation for inedible cuisine. To do that, she jettisoned the inventory of canned food, deep-cleaned and overhauled the kitchen, and designed dishes that are actually worth the price of admission. “The Health Department loves us now,” she said.
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Always good to have the Health Department as a #1 fan. Deep-cleaning the kitchen is also good. But best of all, at least in terms of a restaurant review, is when diners don’t elect to dine elsewhere before showing up for the show. All this and cliff divers wearing nothing but Speedos? Priceless.