Casa Bonita

Colorado has many wonderful, beautiful places to explore, see and experience. However, just like any place once you live anywhere long enough, the weird stuff comes to the surface. This is one of those times.

This place

David's work organized a casual get together for his office and employees' friends and family were invited. As you can see from the name Casa Bonita, it is a Mexican restaurant. But it's not just any restaurant.... it is the weirdest blend of Mexican, Chuck E. Cheese, and carnival.

Apparently it is some tourist gimmicky trap that people end up going to especially if they have children (My children will not be going). They have shows that go on at certain times, areas of entertainment like a puppet stage, an arcade, and some other things. So like Chuck E. Cheese, you are seated and then can roam around the place as you wish.

However, everything about it is subpar. The first thing that lets you know this place is if-y is that they MAKE you order food before you can even enter the dining area and where the shows are. You have to walk through a queue to order and then continue down the queue to pick up your food.

The queue to ORDER. Don't let the decent deco fool you

That's where you pick up your food

Once you get your food, you then walk to where the hostess is. She'll sit you from there. Picking up your food and seating yourself makes sense and I have no idea why they need to have a hostess to seat you. If there's a hold up, you have to wait while holding your food.

A bit about the food. We were talking about the restaurant on the train and the locals that overheard us all said the same thing. Be careful what you eat. You're better off just eating sopaipillas (fried sweet bread). Great. So we look at the menu and, thank GOD, they had a teeny gringos section. So we both ordered the friend chicken that came with mashed potatoes, rolls, green beans and salad. Best choice. Everyone else who ordered didn't even touch their meat and mystery cheese.

We didn't get to see the shows because we were in a little enclave area and you couldn't see much. I was alright with that. We were having a good time chatting with people.

After dinner we were coerced into going in the 'cave'. It was awful. I think it was supposed to be like a haunted cave and things popped out at you... sort of.

And then the end of the cave had misspelled scary messages

The service was below average and the whole place was stuffy and humid. You don't realize it's stuffy until you leave the place and take a deep breath. Oh man. And it's located in a ghetto area. I would not feel safe walking alone at night.

In short, I'm probably never coming here again. I can say, though, at least it was an experience. And if any of my friends come to visit, we're probably not going to go here. We'll take you some place better.