The Cure’s Robert Smith Calls the Entertainment at Casa Bonita the ‘Greatest Thing I’ve Ever Seen’

When he’s not busy destroying Mecha-Streisand with his “Robert Punch,” The Cure frontman Robert Smith can be found chowing down on refried beans and marveling at the magnificence of the Casa Bonita cliff divers.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s passion project, the eleven-figure rehab of the beloved Denver area Mexican restaurant and entertainment megaplex Casa Bonita, is still some indeterminate distance away from opening its doors to the general public — though some A-listers are already basking in the magnificence that only hard work, passion and $40 million can achieve. 

Starting last year, select celebrities and lucky fans from the nearly year-long waitlist have been able to visit the sprawling shrine of tacos and puppet shows in successive waves of the Casa Bonita soft launch, and the review from one such celebrity guest suggests that the massive fortune Parker and Stone have poured into the restaurant that played a pivotal role in their childhoods (as well as a couple particularly memorable South Park episodes) was money well spent.

Smith, who famously appeared in the Season One South Park episode “Mecha-Streisand” voicing a kaiju-powered version of himself, visited Casa Bonita during The Cure’s 2023 tour and spoke about the experience in the Casa Bonita documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last weekend. Smith has stayed in touch with Parker and Stone since appearing on their fledgling series, and the rock star thought that he was “just having tacos” when he visited Casa Bonita – yeah, and Cartman needed “just a minute” to speedrun the whole place.

When The Cure reached the Denver stop during its North American tour last June, Smith recalled thinking, “Wow, this is mental” when a fleet of black SUVs dropped him and his bandmates off in front of the towering pink temple to Mexican food and extravagant entertainment. Unlike the South Park fandom, Smith had not been following the renovations (or South Park) all that closely leading up to his visit, so he was surprised by the iconic Casa Bonita cliff divers’ dinner show.

Additionally, Casa Bonita’s Day of the Dead attraction featured (legally licensed) music from The Cure, and Smith claimed that hearing his hit song “The Blood” from the 1985 album The Head on the Door during the performance made him exclaim, “That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.”

I guess those licensing fees didn’t cover The Cure’s entire discography – I would have said that Casa Bonita was “Just Like Heaven.”