Matt Stone and Trey Parker reopen Casa Bonita restaurant from ‘South Park’
The creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, have purchased a Colorado restaurant that was featured in an episode of their animated show. Stone and Parker are restoring Casa Bonita in Lakewood, Denver.
After the South Park episode was aired, in which Eric Cartman gets excited at visiting the amusement park/restaurant, Stone and Parker were often asked whether it was based on a real place.
The pair, like many Colorado natives, had often enjoyed birthday parties there as children, but in 2020, the place went bankrupt during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Now, though, Casa Bonita will reopen under the new ownership of Parker and Stone. “It doesn’t stink like chlorine anymore,” Stone recently said. “We could have rebuilt this twice as big for half as much money, but we spent so much restoring it, like a piece of art.”
There’s also been a complete overhaul of the food, which had previously been jokingly bad. Parker said now that the culinary offerings at Casa Bonita are “excellent”.
The investment has not been cheap, though, with Stone admitting humorously that the running cost has been close to “infinity dollars”.
Parker added, “It would be way cheaper if we just went hang gliding over volcanoes.” The pair have left much of the strange allure of Casa Bonita as it was always intended.
“We sat down and talked a lot about it: We know how to clean this up, narratively,” Parker said. “It’s about discovery.” The project is one of passion for the two South Park writers, and they’ve largely paid out of pocket without much hope for a return on their investment.
Parker noted, “It’s such a visceral place. That’s what I hope makes it so cool,” before Stone signed off, “That’s worth infinity dollars”.
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