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600,000 ‘South Park’ Fans Are Still Waiting to Eat at Casa Bonita

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Robert Smigel came up with the idea for Let's Make a Poop a few years back, a Jeopardy!-style game show with an eclectic panel of celebrity contestants hosted by Smigel’s longtime associate, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. “I did one show in Brooklyn that’s on YouTube with Lawrence O’Donnell, Pete Davidson and Anthony Scaramucci,” Smigel told me. “That was back in late 2019. I was planning on a regular live podcast that I was gonna do in theaters. And then the pandemic happened.”

And that was that for Let’s Make A Poop — at least for a while. Smigel turned his attention to Leo, the animated comedy he wrote and directed with Adam Sandler, a project that took years of post-pandemic attention. But in January, Smigel was asked to perform at San Francisco’s Sketchfest alongside a certain polka-playing funny man, giving him a chance to revive the game show and “passive-aggressively poop on Weird Al. I really enjoyed praising him for songs that don’t exist but perhaps could have.”

As some fans may already be aware, a number of iconic South Park locations were based on real-life places — from Stark’s Pond, to South Park Elementary, to the fantastical land of “Ca-na-da.” But perhaps most importantly, Cartman’s favorite novelty-filled Mexican eatery, Casa Bonita, is a real restaurant just outside of Denver.

We’ve mentioned before that South Park creators, and failed political prognosticators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone bought the flailing business in 2021, and spent roughly “infinity dollars” (or around $40 million) restoring Casa Bonita to its former glory. As the duo told The Today Show in 2023, the decision was 100 percent irony-free, and completely rooted in a genuine love of the establishment. 

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