DENVER – If you’ve been itching to get back to Casa Bonita for the past year, you’re partially in luck, as the famed Lakewood restaurant is starting to reopen – just not for food quite yet.
The restaurant is offering tours through 9 p.m. each day through the 50,000-square foot restaurant and giving people access to the gift shop to pick up some memorabilia from one of Colorado’s most famous restaurants.
The restaurant had hopes to reopen by Memorial Day after being closed for more than a year. Casa Bonita’s parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April. And supporters of the restaurant have launched a crowdfunding campaign to save Casa Bonita.
As COVID restrictions are lifted, the restaurant says it is doing a staggered reopening, starting with the tours and then likely moving on to a soft opening, where they might serve sopapillas, chips and salsa, before a full reopening to the public.
“We figured maybe it will be easy to social distance in this place, but with all the entertainment and things of that nature, it’s just really hard,” said Casa Bonita’s Dawn Mestas.
The restaurant is looking to hire kitchen workers, servers and even its famous divers ahead of reopening, which they say they hope will happen by the end of the summer.
Denver7 Photojournalist Eric English again brought out the mini drone to take a tour of the world-famous restaurant like you’ve never seen before.