“Casa Bonita Mi Amor!” and the fight to preserve America’s most unlikely restaurants

Casa Bonita, the legendary Denver-area restaurant and entertainment complex, is perhaps one of America’s most surreal dining experiences. Its pink adobe façade rises unexpectedly over a nondescript shopping plaza, while inside visitors are greeted by a sensory overload: 30-foot waterfalls, neon light-adorned palm trees, wandering mariachis and the faint aroma of fried food and nostalgia. It's like someone took Elvis Presley’s 1963 “Fun in Acapulco” and smashed it together with a Chuck E. Cheese — just with more cliff diving and fewer animatronic nightmares.

In 2003, a whole nation of Americans living outside of Colorado discovered the wonder of Casa Bonita thanks to a seventh season-episode of “South Park,” which is best described as a subversive love letter to the restaurant. The plot revolves around Eric Cartman’s singular, increasingly desperate desire to experience the splendor (and sopapillas) of Casa Bonita, which in this universe operates as a shrine to the kind of spectacle that only exists when nostalgia meets capitalism and refuses to yield to taste.

But as is often the case from “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the episode’s sharp-edged satire is laced with deep sentimentality, rendering Casa Bonita almost mythical, a place so ludicrous in its artifice that it becomes a cultural touchstone. Through Cartman’s over-the-top scheming —  like trapping a fellow kid underground while faking an apocalyptic meteor strike just to make it to dinner —we’re reminded of the way certain spaces, no matter how kitsch or questionable, become essential to our personal narratives. 

Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t a complete surprise when Parker and Stone themselves decided to buy the real Casa Bonita “with an eye on returning it to its early 1970s glory” after the old owners closed the restaurant in 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, later filing for bankruptcy in 2021. The pair anticipated it would take between $6 and $8 million to make their dreams a reality. 

It ended up taking $40 million. 

“CASA BONITA MI AMOR!,” a new documentary from filmmaker Arthur Bradford that’s out now in theaters, follows Parker and Stone through the chaotic, costly and often surprisingly sincere renovation effort. The film stands on its own as a compelling watch, particularly for those with the “Casa Bonita” episode of South Park still echoing in their memory, two decades on, or for devotees of restaurant makeover shows. There’s an undeniable charm in seeing Parker, alongside chef Dana Rodriguez — brought on to rescue Casa Bonita from its reputation of freezer-burned enchiladas — travel to Oaxaca to handpick décor or reimagine the restaurant’s animatronics. 

But "CASA BONITA MI AMOR!" also situates itself within a growing subgenre of documentaries—like “I Like Killing Flies,” “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” “Deli Man,” and “City of Gold”—that seek to showcase, and in this case, perhaps even preserve, the remaining singular dining experiences in a food landscape increasingly swallowed by homogenization. Together, these documentaries share a common thread: the recognition that human-run establishments, with all their quirks, represent something irreplaceable. They’re cultural landmarks, social gathering spots and testaments to individuality in a world where corporate chains and faceless ghost kitchens continue gaining ground. 

The rise of ghost kitchens, delivery-only operations often backed by venture capital, has accelerated post-COVID, making it easier than ever to order food from seemingly local “restaurants” that don’t physically exist. In his final essay for The New York Times as the paper’s food critic, Pete Wells lamented this shift, pointing out the growing dehumanization of the dining experience. 

“In my first few years on the job, I thought of restaurants as one of the few places left where our experiences were completely human,” Wells wrote. “We might work silently in our cubicles, rearranging and transmitting zeros and ones. We might walk around with speakers in our ears that played digital music files chosen by an algorithm. We might buy our books and sweaters and toothpaste with a click and wait until they showed up at our door. We might flirt, fight and make up by text.” 

“But when we went out to eat, we were people again,” Wells continued. 

Wells wasn’t just mourning the loss of physical restaurants; he was mourning the erosion of the relationships that once defined dining. Where we used to know the name of the chef or the local owner, more often now, we click through delivery apps with no sense of who’s cooking or where our money is going. 

Even the giants of fast food, like McDonald’s and Wendy’s, are succumbing to an ever-growing uniformity, with dining rooms disappearing and cashiers replaced by touchscreens and pick-up-only storefronts. In this shift, the soul of dining—the communal, human experience it fosters—feels increasingly elusive. This is precisely why documentaries centered on singular, idiosyncratic restaurants resonate so deeply, offering a glimpse of what’s being lost in the march toward homogenization.

In “I Like Killing Flies,” (released in 2004, a year after the debut of the  “Casa Bonita”episode of “South Park”) we follow the gruff, yet brilliant Kenny Shopsin, whose New York City diner became an institution despite his curmudgeonly nature and associated rules: all customers must eat, parties of four or more are unwelcome, and if you annoy Shopsin, you’re out the door. “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” offers a mesmerizing portrait of Jiro Ono, an uncompromising sushi master who pursues perfection from a kitchen in the basement of an office building adjacent to the Ginza Metro subway station in Tokyo. 

“Deli Man,” from 2015, offers a poignant look at the vanishing world of Jewish delicatessens, each truly unique in their own ways, while “City of Gold” explores the late food critic Jonathan Gold’s love affair with the diverse culinary landscape of Los Angeles, celebrating the immigrant-run spots that give the city its flavor.

In this context, “CASA BONITA MI AMOR!” isn’t just a tale of two famous television-makers restoring a kitschy restaurant. Like other media that encourages viewers to consider what we lose when we trade in our local haunts for faceless convenience, it’s a tribute and a rallying cry. It’s also an invitation: To celebrate the humanity of the singular dining experiences we have left.