South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are apparently learning that owning a restaurant is a lot harder than animating one on TV for Comedy Central. The proud owners of Denver area attraction Casa Bonita are having a much more difficult time renovating the place since they bought it last year, in what’s apparently not a homage to The Bear but simply the duo sinking a lot of money into the Mexican restaurant just to open it back up.
As The Denver Post detailed on Tuesday, Stone has been very up front about how difficult (and expensive) renovating Casa Bonita has been over the last few months.
“Have you ever seen ‘Kitchen Nightmares’? It’s the very, very worst one of those you could possibly ever imagine,” said Parker. “What we thought would be, ‘Oh this will be cool. We can buy this and open it and it’ll be around again,’ turned into ‘Oh this is going to be what we have to put all our money into and hope that it works.’”
The Post described the scene as an active construction site with 80 or so workers updating all kinds of things inside the restaurant. And Stone didn’t have great things to say about the previous owners, who apparently did a number on the place over the years. The fountain out front of the property, for example, had to be razed because of safety concerns. A lot of the basics had to be redone during the renovation, which has delayed the chances of even thinking about a reopening.
Things like updating the HVAC system and plumbing, and work on electrical and gas lines – “we’re talking about just health and safety stuff, like so someone won’t die,” Stone said.
…
“The previous owners deferred maintenance in an almost superhuman way,” said Stone. “They just didn’t take care of anything. And they ran it completely into the ground.”
Despite the construction delays and surprise costs, though, Stone reaffirmed that the duo will stick it out and make a new Casa Bonita a reality. It just means he may not be able to save a Coney Island hot dog he’s been eying up as well.
“Anyone else that’s said, ‘Oh I wanted to buy Casa Bonita,’ they wouldn’t have made it because this is going to cost so much and it’s really dumb,” said Parker. “We absolutely should bail and stop spending money, but we’re committed now.”
We’ll have to wait just a bit longer on those sopapillas, I suppose.
[via The Denver Post]
