After Meal 308, Has Andrew Novick Finally Gotten His Fill of Casa Bonita?

Andrew Novick has eaten at Casa Bonita 308 times. He's not sure he'll go back for a 309th meal there.

Novick, an artrepreneur who considered himself Casa Bonita's biggest fan, celebrated his 300th visit with a major bash in 2019, and returned for a 307th time just days before the pandemic hit and restaurants around the country had to close in March 2020. Casa Bonita never reopened — at least, not under the same owner, Robert Wheaton, whose company had acquired it after Unigate bought it from founder Bill Waugh.

In April 2021, Wheaton's Summit Family Restaurants filed for bankruptcy protection. By then, Novick was already campaigning to save the place, creating Save Casa Bonita with a consortium of local business types and staging events to keep Casa Bonita in the public eye. He'd discovered the pink eatertainment palace when he was five, not long after it opened in March 1974 at 6715 West Colfax Avenue, near where his mother worked in Lakewood. “I’ve been going there my whole life,” he told us before that record 300th meal. “My brother and I had some birthdays there and went as kids. I don’t have a specific recollection of why I liked it, I just knew I liked it.”

He started liking it even more when "I was at the University of Colorado Boulder, where I first met people who weren’t from here, and I would take them to Denver to do fun stuff," he recalls. "Going to Casa Bonita with someone for the first time is what made me love it so much.”

But as he set out to save it, he didn't love that he and his colleagues got stonewalled by the courts. And then in August 2021, South Park founders Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced on a Facebook Live hosted by Governor Jared Polis that they'd made a deal to buy Casa Bonita. When Novick offered to help the new owners, he ran into more pink stucco walls.

Forty-plus-million dollars of restoration and renovations later, Casa Bonita reopened at the end of May...sort of. It's still not accepting reservations, much less walk-ups; you must sign up on its website and then wait for an invitation to make a reservation (and pay for your fixed-price dinner — $39.99 for adults, $24.99 for kids — in advance).

Novick, who'd been through the building a few times during the pandemic when the old owner was offering tours, finally got the invitation to make a reservation a few weeks ago, but instead wound up joining a friend's party earlier this month. Like Novick, she's a fan — she even has a tattoo of the place. The two were "skeptical but open-minded" as they headed inside, he recalls. They wanted to like what they found.

But first they had to make their way through what Novick calls "kind of a chaotic situation," with metal detectors and a route that took you past the old entry to a row of windows in what had been the magic shop, where you ordered your specific meal. "And the secret birthday passage, with its mural of bananas, was gone," Novick laments. But there were consolation prizes as you headed to the food line, including a vintage TV showing old commercials for Casa Bonita — even the one featuring Ricardo Montalban that had been almost impossible to find.
Although the food had never been the most important part of a visit to Casa Bonita, it had always provoked the most comment...from everyone but Novick, who always focused on other aspects of the experience. And that was true on this visit, too. While his brisket was "great" and he liked the slaw, the rice and beans were almost inedible, he says. And what was with the pre-honeyed sopaipillas?

He and his group quickly left their table in the silver mine (which was rarely used for seating before, he notes) in order to tour the rest of Casa Bonita. It was full of twenty- and thirty-somethings, like a date night, he says, with almost no kids running around, a hallmark at the Casa Bonita he remembered. His reservation was at 7:30 p.m., relatively late for children, but he still wonders how many families can afford to go with the new prices.

The restored puppet show plaza looked good, and he appreciated the new feature at the bottom of the well. The sound was improved, too — perhaps too improved. "I think they went way overboard," he says. "It's kind of sterile. Everything's kind of shiny and new. Lots of lighting. Like a Hollywood version of Casa Bonita."

The dragon's mouth where you could pose — Novick has a big collection of those pictures — was gone, and he never saw the legendary gorilla in action, though he did spot his head in the museum by the exit. While he appreciated that bit of history, he was sorry the new owners "didn't carry it through the restaurant," he says.

When Parker and Stone bought the place, they said that the mantra for restoration would be "change nothing, improve everything." But Novick sees plenty of room for improvement in this preservation job, and it starts with bringing back some of the original, if hokey, charm. The kind of charm that South Park depicted in its episode on Casa Bonita that debuted twenty years ago.

Maybe some of that improvement will be made as Casa Bonita gets ready for a big fiftieth-anniversary celebration in March. The owners are reportedly interested in involving Colorado artists, but Novick isn't holding his breath — after all, they used an Atlanta artist for the illustration of Casa Bonita that's now being used on posters and snowboards and other items available for sale on the Casa Bonita website and in the restaurant's shop. "They went very far out of their way not to engage the locals," Novick observes.

But local artists can still have their say: In February, nearby Next Gallery will host its seventh Casa Bonita show. Co-op member Dolla B was inspired to start the tradition after Next moved to West Colfax Avenue from its longtime home in northwest Denver. She reached out to Novick, and the concept was "a resounding win," he recalls. "People had such a fun time. The cool thing about it is there are so many things in there that people can make art about."

So much that they've had trouble narrowing down the art; last year Next had room for only seventy of the 120 entries. This time, Novick and Dolla have added a third judge, Mona Lucero, to help them go through all the submissions that address this year's theme: "The 2024 Casa Bonita Show - How do you like me now?"

"We were trying to think of something not all gung ho Casa Bonita, not anti-Casa Bonita," Novick explains. "You can voice your thoughts through your art."

Maybe by creating a large cease-and-desist letter, he suggests, like the one cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz received after he posted prints of his Westword cover illustration of Casa Bonita for sale on Etsy. (That inspired the warning on the show's call-for-entry site that the Casa Bonita font and logo are trademarked.)

Novick will be spending a lot of time by Casa Bonita as he prepares for the show's February 17 opening. But he's not sure he'll try to go inside again for that 309th visit.

"It was fun going there every time, but now I don't even feel like I need to go back," he concludes. "I'm glad it's saved, but it's not this cool old thing. It's a new place."