I recently visited an infamous Denver restaurant called Casa Bonita the other day. This is my critical review:
For those of you who are unaware, I moved to Denver, CO about a month ago. For those of you who are even more unaware, Denver, CO is one of the last outposts in the mild west before you and your group of merry frontiersmen venture into the Rocky Mountains (a highly treacherous terrain where many die of dysentery, John Denveritis, and wifi starvation) on your way to find gold in the Promised Land of Las Vegas, where you promptly lose that gold and journey even more wester, only to end up destitute on the streets of San Francisco living a life as free as Kerouac's conscience.
Denver is most well know for it's flannel industry. On your arrival to the city you pass through field after field of red flannel plantations. Young bearded men hunched over in the long rows, quality checking the flannel grain, making sure they match with various Warby Parker frames. It's a little known fact that if you laid all the beards and flannel in Denver end-to-end it would be long enough to wrap around the flat earth 4.2 times.
Denver is slightly less well known for a restaraunt called Casa Bonita. For those of you unaware of the spanish language, Casa Bonita roughly translates to: "Food House." Casa Bonita has been open since 1973. I want to repeat that: Casa Bonita has been open for 45 years...
I had heard about this restaurant and it's eccentricities before, but nothing can prepare you for the experience itself. As is true for most humanitarian disasters, it started with getting into a line.
Why was this line here? I'm not sure, but it didn't seem like I had much of a choice. I got into line and craned my neck to survey the situation. People. I saw people. The line stretched and stretched as far as I could see, it eventually wrapped around the corner of a poorly painted mexican street scene of even more people merrily dancing in cobblestone streets. I'm not sure if it was my existential vertigo or not, but for a brief moment I had trouble differentiating between the real people and the painted people. This was the first sign of trouble. I should have turned around then and there.
I waited in line for what seemed like an eternity. It very well may have been because it also seemed like I had entered a cell service dead zone, so my phone was of no use. This worried me. What if I needed to call for help? How would I instagram my food?
Minutes turned into hours, hours turned into days, days into weeks. How long had I been waiting? At this point it felt like my whole life. The other faces in line were gaunt, their eyes, as hollow as sopapillas, would drift hungrily about and settle like feathers on a silent autumn day on the menu in their hands, "Number 15, please... water, please..." they would say to no one inparticular, the words absorbing like Tabasco into the thick burrito air. I could faintly hear a cow steadily mooing in the distance. A child screamed.
Eventually the line shuffled forward and I found myself in front of a stack of slop trays. At this point I was starving, it felt like my stomach was the size of my certainty, and I shakily grabbed a tray. I was greeted by a young man whose disinterest was as cavernous as my hunger. He asked me, "What you get." And I repeated, "Number 15, please... water, please..."
Wait, is that what I ordered? Was that me who was saying that before? I couldn't tell any longer. At this point it hardly mattered, I needed something to eat. The disinterested teen grabbed a plate of food and sloshed it onto my slop tray. Now, I can't be certain at this point, because I was delirious with hunger, but I'm pretty sure that when the plate hit my tray I could hear a faint "Moooo..." coming from somewhere underneath the refried beans.
The empty teen motioned me forward and I followed the line to a seating checkpoint where I was sized up and evaluated by another vacant teenager. The people before me were motioned to the left, I'm assuming for delousing and registration of belongings, and I was motioned to the right. I followed a meandering corridor that morphed from mexican city streets into a rocky cavern. There were dimly lit tables scattered about, but no other patrons to be found, or I'm pretty sure I was alone. I thought I could faintly see pairs of glowing red and green eyes at the other tables, but then again it could just be my hunger hallucinations. I was sat in the far corner of the cave.
I tore into my Number 15. I don't remember much of it. All in one moment there seemed to be a tornado of shredded lettuce and beef enchilada as I voraciously ate my food. And just like that it was over. I had eaten. I had eaten? Yes, that's why I was here, to eat, remember? I vaguely remember walking through some doors and into a line, but I couldn't remember why exactly. Things were hazy.
Why was I in this cave? I called out, "Excuse me?", but all I could hear in return was the echoes of my own voice. Or was it? Maybe one of the cavernous teens was responding. I did not know.
I got up from my table and ventured forth, determined to find my way out. My way home. Home... my wife and children... would they even remember me? Wait, I'm not married and I don't have kids. But my beard is so long now, how long had I been here? I'm pretty sure I shaved this morning...
I wandered through the cave, lighter in the air, groping along the walls for the exit. I prayed that the lighter didn't ignite any of the noxious bean fumes that had collected from the previous customers.
Eventually I was spewed out the mouth of the cave into what looked like Busch Gardens. There were people everywhere, gathered around a waterfall, looking up. What was happening? I followed their collective gaze to the top of the cliff where I saw a young man in a safari outfit having a conversation with a gorilla. They were calling out to the crowd with microphones, but I could not hear what was being said. The echo and reverb bounced off the walls, waves of sound and smell collecting in my senses, a hypnotizing grip on my soul. I stared and prayed and hoped for peace. I assumed that's what others were doing, but I could not be sure if they were praying for themselves or praying to the gorilla.
SPLASH! The seal on the pool was broken and shattered water was sent into the air, raining down on patrons holding margaritas. I shook my head. I need to go. I need to get out. I turned and ran. I could feel the mexican restaurant reverberations surrounding me. Chasing me?
I rounded a bend and met face to face with another vacant teen. He stared into my eyes, I'm assumed he was trying to suck out my soul, but he broke the tension, "Sir.... sir! What prize do you want?"
Prize? I looked down and in my hand I was holding a long ribbon of arcade tickets. Where did I get these?
I looked around. I was surrounded by ski-ball machines and wailing children. Behind me was a game called Feed Big Bertha, a machine inhabited by a muppet-like woman with a gaping maw. Small childrens hands were shoving balls into her mouth. If I didn't know better I would have assumed this is the machine they train the waitstaff on.
Panicking I blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "Home!"
The vacuous teen stared at me with dead eyes. "Sir, what do I look like, a real estate agent? You can either get a plastic spider ring or these emoji sunglasses."
I screamed. "HOOOOME! I WANT TO GO HOME!!!!"
I moved. I didn't know where I was going. But I moved. Through caves with pirates, past mariachi bands, through clouds of fog and bean gas. The echoes chasing me. Encircling me. Accepting me. Ripples of taco stuffings enveloping my brain. Shards of shell and cheese getting stuck in my feet. More gorilllas. Sasquatch? No. Couldn't be. He's Canadian. Hands grabbed for me, taking hold of my red flannel for a second before I could wrench myself away. Running. Running.
Time slowed and maybe even came to a stop. It all became a blur of mexican food and terror. I forgot all words except for what was on the menu. I tried to remember who I was. Who am I? I don't know. I'm... I'm... Casa Bonita...
I burst through a set of doors.
I was outside.
The sun was blinding. The crisp mountain air hit me and I collapsed in fits of hyperventilation. I was out. Finally.
I gathered myself and slowly stood up, brushing myself off. I looked down to make sure I was still intact and found myself... wearing a large red flannel shirt, long bearded, with a craft beer in my hand and wearing a fitted Colorado Rockies hat. Oh no! I checked my cell phone for the time and it said, "April 20, 1973."
I fell back to my knees and screamed bloody murder into the empty Colorado sky, my hollow words reverberating in hopelessness through the empty universe, this beautiful food house.
THE END