LAKEWOOD, CO. — Final week, I used to be in Colorado to offer a speech on the College of Denver about my profession overlaying Mexican meals in america. My hosts requested the place I wished to dine the night time earlier than my speak.
The selection was apparent, even when it shocked them: Casa Bonita.
It’s probably the most notorious Mexican eating places within the nation, a sprawling complicated in a run-down suburban purchasing plaza lampooned since its 1974 opening as every thing from a Mexican Disneyland to a cultural hate crime for its perpetually fiesta environment. The place seemingly closed for good through the pandemic, an growing old relic in an period when individuals didn’t must think about themselves in Mexico for a night as a result of Mexicans had been now throughout them.
However in 2023, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone reopened the place as a result of the formally designated Lakewood historic landmark was a childhood favourite of theirs. They spent $40 million to return Casa Bonita to its heyday, right down to freshly scrubbed pretend palm fronds and restored classic tilework whereas vowing to make the meals lengthy nicknamed “Casa No-Eat-A” really edible.
I’m extra of a “Simpsons” fan, however I’ve at all times appreciated “South Park” for persistently arguing all through its 27-year run that indiscriminately deporting Mexicans isn’t just morally and economically improper however silly.
This season, Parker and Stone have upped their assaults on anti-Mexican hate by enjoying its trademark satire principally straight. They’ve depicted Fox Information as MAGA sycophants, President Trump as a lawsuit-happy despot and JD Vance as … properly, JD Vance. ICE is proven as a division so uncontrolled that it detains Dora the Explorer and so incompetent that they rent the present’s skeletal counselor Mr. Mackey, who rapidly will get promoted after serving to to raid heaven.
At a time when Trump’s deportation Leviathan is doing every thing doable to forged undocumented immigrants, a lot of them Mexicans, because the worst of the worst, “South Park” is exposing their lies whereas its homeowners try a reclamation undertaking on a long-reviled Mexican restaurant. How might I not pay my respects to Parker and Stone’s combo plate of pro-Mexican PR by making a pilgrimage to Casa Bonita?
Casa Bonita in Lakewood, Colo.
(David Kelly / For The Instances)
I met my hosts on the restaurant’s entrance, made to appear to be a pueblo plaza full with an enormous water fountain, towering church steeple and a pink exterior higher suited to a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. A line already prolonged out the door. Reservations are at such a premium at Casa Bonita that we couldn’t sneak in an additional individual into our social gathering of six.
Casa Bonita can maintain greater than 2,000 individuals at one time and it appeared that’s how many individuals stopped by the night time I went. Each 10 minutes or so, a gong rang and an announcer proclaimed a brand new act was set to begin — a magic present, a mariachi, a wandering gorilla. Close to the exit was a large statue of Cartman, the “South Park” character lengthy utilized by Parker and Stone to depict America at its most crass. Right here, he’s an awestruck child taking a look at a desk of enchiladas, burritos and tacos. It’s a callback to a well-known 2003 episode that launched Casa Bonita to a nationwide viewers that couldn’t imagine such a restaurant really existed.
The meals was OK, alas — a satisfactory brisket burrito, chalky queso, insipid guacamole. When the very best factor at a restaurant is its chips, the menu has issues. However as I seemed round, I spotted that Casa Bonita’s meals was secondary to the scene. What mattered was that for a few hours, every thing and something Mexican was cool.
Diners — white, Black, Latino, Asian, Muslim — cheered as divers twisted and turned off a 30-foot pretend waterfall right into a small pool each 20 minutes in an homage to Acapulco’s well-known clavadistas. Patrons laughed at a corny however cute puppet present starring Casa Bonita’s dishes, from a chirpy hard-shelled taco to a coquettish sopaipilla. I made my approach by way of a small maze, admired random stalagmites and skim a small show about Casa Bonita’s historical past that praised the life story of its head chef, Mexican immigrant Dana Rodriguez, as one in every of “resilience and dedication.”
There was nothing patronizing about how Casa Bonita depicted Mexicans — no garish items, no mock Spanish. No strolling waiters in ponchos putting sombreros on unsuspecting diners, no pretend mustaches. Adults walked round with the identical smiles and joie de vivre as youngsters.
As the short dinner my hosts and I had been purported to have at Casa Bonita became two hours, I considered one other Hollywood impolite boy turned amigo of Mexicans: Jimmy Kimmel. His eponymous ABC late-night present was briefly suspended after he tried in a monologue to tie the suspected killer of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk to MAGA, sparking threats of retribution from the Trump regime. The Brooklyn native first grew to become well-known within the late Nineties with Comedy Central applications reminiscent of “The Man Present” and “Crank Yankers,” the place Latinos had been largely depicted as sexpots, drunkards or dimwits.
On “Jimmy Kimmel Dwell!” its host did the other. One of many visitor hosts over the summer season was Mexican actor and “Andor” star Diego Luna, who spoke forcefully towards the ICE raids that terrorized Los Angeles this summer season and handled his viewers one night time to free burritos from Orange County’s beloved Burritos La Palma. Becoming a member of Luna within the enjoyable was Guillermo Rodriguez, an immigrant from the Mexican state of Zacatecas who began on the present as a car parking zone safety guard however way back graduated to Kimmel’s hombre on the road.
Whereas wokosos at all times accused Kimmel of utilizing Rodriguez — higher identified to followers as merely “Guillermo” — for laughs (conveniently forgetting that the laconic, paunchy sidekick has been an archetype of Latino humor for the reason that days of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza), common Latinos beloved the man as a result of he’s one in every of us. That’s why my social media feed was full of concern about what would occur to Guillermo if Kimmel had been to lose his present for good and why Latinos had been particularly outraged at ABC benching the 2.
If Kimmel might be part of the “South Park” bros in embracing Mexicans, then any bro can.
After vowing to not purchase any souvenirs, I purchased a Casa Bonita sticker for my laptop computer and a shot glass. I might’ve spent hours extra there however my hosts had lessons to show the next day. We stopped by a wishing properly, the place a employee handed me a token to throw right down to an animated genie who promised to grant my wishes.
“No extra migra,” I mentioned, loud sufficient to attract a weary smile from my hosts.
“Oh. I’m sorry,” the genie proclaimed after a brief pause. “That’s not possible.”
Thanks for nothing, 2025. “South Park,” save us!
