Casa Bonita

Oh, where to begin with Casa Bonita? With the divers? The sopaipillas? The guy in the gorilla suit? Or maybe its two bankruptcies under previous ownership and a more recent performers’ union strike? The long and short of it is that Casa Bonita is a fever dream of a restaurant, once a predictably insane birthday spot at the corner of strip mall in Lakewood that got its hot pink profile raised in 2003, when Comedy Central’s “South Park” featured the restaurant as a key plot point in an episode — with its own theme song and everything — and then again in 2021 when the South Park creators bought the place and renovated it.