Lakewood, Colorado: Casa Bonita

Casa Bonita is still there and doing very well. It was quite busy on a weeknight. It's a fun restaurant, but the food is quite bad -- basically Taco Bell quality at three times the price. The entertainment is really fun, though.

If you are passing through the area, need a hotel, and are thinking of staying, drive out of this area first. Apparently, Colfax is a terrible neighborhood.

Casa Bonita is still in business, although I have never been inside. The restaurant is located in the "JCRS Shopping Center." It is rare for people in this area to know what "JCRS" stands for, much less the out-of-town visitors who are taken to the Mexican themed restaurant. The non-abbreviated name would actually be the "Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society Shopping Center"!

North, up the hill behind the shopping center, are the buildings of the former tuberculosis sanatorium ("consumption" was another term for tuberculosis). JCRS (the tuberculosis treatment center, NOT the shopping center) was established 100 years ago in 1904. At the time, many "consumptives" were traveling from the crowded East coast cities to areas like Denver for the only known treatment: fresh dry air. Patients would be housed in tents and later in rooms with open air balconies. Being out in the fresh air was encouraged even during the winter.

In the 1960s, with medicine eradicating tuberculosis the sanatorium was converted to cancer research. In 2003/4 the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design purchased the buildings for its campus. Historical buildings, including concrete "tents" for the patients, are being preserved.

Last April, we dined at Casa Bonita,which they bill as "The World's Most Exciting Restaurant". It was everything you said it was in your book. Dinners coming out of holes in the wall, cliff divers, musicians playing "Happy Birthday" at every table (whether it was your birthday or not, didn't matter), Puppet shows, caves, tunnels, the list goes on. Need your waitress? Raise the table flag up -- she's there in moments. The place is amazing, definitely great for kids, or the adventurous.