After doing a lil' searchin' around it turns out there are two existing Casa Bonitas out of the original four; one in Denver, and one in Tulsa. I had no idea but the innovator of that place also was the mastermind behind Crystal's .. ! Who knew? I found this interesting blog entry from a guy who used to manage the Crystal's in Irving (and subsequent responses by managers of the Camp Bowie one in the late 70s).. I'll try to recruit him over here for the sake of the convo 
Here tis:
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Just a little bit of history...
Bill Waugh was responsible not only for Casa Bonita and Taco Bueno, but also envisioned (if you remember it as a kid) Crystal's Pizza & Spaghetti. I live in Texas. There used to be a Casa Bonita in Fort Worth, now sadly gone.
There were 4 Casas total, Fort Worth, Tulsa, Denver, and I can't remember where the 4th one was.
I don't know how many Crystal's there were, but by the mid-90s, there were 4. Dallas TX, Irving TX, Abilene TX, and Tulsa, OK (in the same shopping center as the Tulsa Casa Bonita).
All of the Casa Bonitas, Crystal's Pizzas and Taco Buenos used to be under the control of the Casa Bonita Restaurant company under the leadership of Bill Waugh. He sold the chains off to Black-Eyed Pea management sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, when the chain had hit its peak. He now is responsible for the well-known restaurant chain known as Burger Street.
Black-Eyed Pea Management Company went belly-up a few years later and folded, and the 4 surviving Crystal's and 2 surviving Casa Bonitas went under private ownership. Don't know who owns the two Casas now, but I imagine it's the same company that owns both, since their websites are virtually identical.
Today, the only survivors of these once-magnificent restaurants are the Crystal's in Irving, TX (Dallas Area), the Casa in Tulsa, OK, and of course, the Casa discussed in this article.
There were numerous Crystal's, including the largest one in Denver. Rumors about the memory of this restaurant are legendary. If ANYONE has any info, pics or just a good story about this restaurant, please don't hesitate to e-mail me.
Why the interest, might you ask? I worked as a Manager for the last surviving Crystal's in Irving, TX for 3 years, and learned a lot of the history of Mr. Waugh and the Casa Bonita Inc. legacy. All in all, a unique restaurant history and one that will probably never be repeated again.
As for Casa in Denver, if I ever visit my aunt in Boulder, I will visit the restaurant, just to be able to say I saw it. Yes, I know the food is basically repackaged Taco Bueno (I've been to the one that was in FW and the one in Tulsa), but it's still a wonderful place to experience.
Thanks for the blog...glad to hear Casa in Denver is still alive and kicking.
Regards,
S.B.
Dallas, TX
Greetings, all. I am the person guilty of the comments above.
I am the ex-Manager from Crystal's Pizza in Irving. Utamav91, yes, the Crystal's in Irving is still open for business. It's under completely different management now, though (which is not a bad thing, I will explain in a minute). And, needless to say, privately owned. I can't say I agreed with their choice of colors for the new paint job they just gave it, but...it certainly attracts your attention from 183, and I think a new paint job + a bright color says to the customer "Hey, we're revamped, come in and try us out!" It doesn't bother me that much, really, I understand it from a business standpoint. However, I do have to wonder why they painted the pair of stone Sphinxes in the library gold.
Overall, the Crystal's Pizza in Irving is still doing very well, and my hat goes off to the new management for keeping it aloft.
I still keep in close touch with my ex-fellow-managers, and co-workers. The place was pretty important to me in my own young adulthood. The work was grueling, but unlike any other fast food restaurant I'd ever seen before or since, the people there were, for lack of a better word, like family.
I was very priveleged to work among so many unique people. Our managers hired them that way. Work was very, very tough there, as we had a reputation to uphold considering the store's history. Many of us, in a temporary fit of anger, frustration or just plain rage would mutter under our breaths that we were going to quit, but almost everyone who said that ALSO said "I won't quit, though...because I like the people here that I work with too much."
Being a manager was even more difficult. It carried personal responsibility and liability for both your employees and the restaurant's current reputation. I feel that I always did a reasonably good job, overall. Some nights when we got slammed for inexplicable reasons, something would run out on the salad bar and a customer would get pi$$ed, but you learn to deal with things like that. And I always gave the customer his/her money completely back when I felt they had been wronged. Or coupons for free food the next time they came back, whichever made them happier.
Overall, the people running that restaurant are what made it work. Everything else, all the antiques in that store, the unique look of it, the theatre running those long-since-banned Bugs Bunny cartoons, all of it was always just bells and whistles compared to the people who ran it.
It had all the major amenities of a full service restaurant, and then some, plus all the problems of a fast food pizza place. I felt that we were offering a good product though. Our pie dough was hand-rolled every single morning from fresh dough that had been made the night before. Our seasonings for the dough and the sauce were only known by a few employees and kept generally secret. Our Canadian Bacon (which my uncle swore by when I was a kid) was always cut fresh every morning.
And such was life for one of the most unique restaurant concepts of all time. After I left, the store most certainly evolved, but I think it had to, to keep up with the times. It is still lavishly decorated, and kept pretty clean and organized. Buffet is all day now, something we never had in my time. (Hot wings on the buffet are interesting too)...so, I'm happy for the restaurant that new managers put in new ideas to keep the place going. I've been there several times now, and I keep going back. My best friend from high school (also a former employee) and I still love going there about once a month to gorge on pizza and reminisce.
I had the privelege also of -- as I said in my original comments that lobster posted -- getting to know the history of the place. So, I went around asking during my breaks (when I was just a lowly busboy, even back then all our managers would sit with us for lunch or break)....about the past, how it developed, who owned it and how it flourished. Naturally, my managers had some grandiose tales to tell me, to be sure. The one manager and mentor who worked with me the most used to work for Casa in Fort Worth when he was just a late-teen, and being in his 30s by then, had a never-ending sea of stories to tell.
All through this, I listened. I'm good at that. Plus, I like history in general, especially DFW history. So I got -- over time, from many people who had been with the place, some of them since it opened in 1975 -- a basic synopsis of the restaurant's entire history. The story of Bill Waugh came later. Some of the things I heard about him and what a hard man he was to put on a show for when he came to visit were unnerving. But despite that fact, the guy was a genius in envisioning both Crystal's and Casa...
...it's too bad that his original vision is gone, with only one Crystal's left and two Casas left.
But I learned all that I could in the hope of preserving the memories of the places. I know little about the Crystal's in Fort Worth, but my GM told me many stories about working there (which, unfortunately doesn't describe the place). He only told me that the main dining room in the place was HUGE compared to the Irving Crystal's, and a real pain to bus tables on during peak hours.
I feel lucky to have been both a fan as a child and an employee of one of these unique restaurants. I want to thank lobster for finding my commentary on a VERY obscure weblog (kudos to you for doing your homework, hehe) and posting it here.
If there's any question I can answer to any of you, let me know. I will try. I have wanted, as I told lobster in a PM, to get fans of these restaurants and veteran employees together on a unique message board setup, and exchange photos, stories, etc.
I think it would be an awesome idea. Because there are so many people out there who love Crystal's or Casa and think to themselves (whatever happened to those places)? In a nutshell, I want to try and preserve an important part of DFW history, even if only in memory.
Regards to all who replied here,
S.B.
Dallas, TX
