Café Rio was founded in the bustling, boiling metropolis of St. George, Utah (more commonly known as St. Geezy). The fast-casual Mexican grill offers cuisine inspired by northern Mexico and the southwest United States. Café Rio first came into consciousness for me in 2008 when the growing chain opened a location just a couple miles from my house. The new Café Rio restaurant shared a parking lot with our local Costco Wholesale warehouse, which was frequented by my parents, who had five growing boys’ mouths to feed. Café Rio quickly became a ritualistic part of Costco shopping excursions for thousands.
Café Rio took our northwest Las Vegas neighborhood by storm. Our small location was always busy. Everyone had two or three partially filled Café Rio punch cards in their wallet, and they were considered legal tender among my middle school classmates. The chorus of a kitchen crew shouting “FREE MEAL” is a core memory from my adolescence. Café Rio was most famous for its sweet barbacoa pork, and every Mormon family had a copycat recipe waiting for them in their crockpot after church.
Enter Costa Vida. Costa Vida is another Utah-based, fast-casual, northern Mexico/southwest U.S.-inspired restaurant. At first glance, Café Rio and Costa Vida appear to be nearly identical. However, if you look a little deeper, you’ll still see that Café Rio and Costa Vida are nearly identical.
Their menus each include burritos, salads, enchiladas, and nachos, with a variety of chicken, signature sweet pork, and beef selections, cilantro-lime rice, black or pinto beans? Mild, medium, or hot sauce? Would you like that enchilada style, sir? Or smothered? Of course I do. *SLOSH SLOSH* goes the sauce, and *SPRINKLE SPRINKLE* goes the cheese, and onto that conveyor belt and into the toaster oven it goes. Lettuce and pico on the side. Sure, I’ll pay $1.50 for a glop of guac. Medium drink. I’ll choose from a selection of Coke products, or maybe I can have house-made horchata or limeade instead.
Local lore perpetuates the story of a Café Rio executive who wanted to franchise a new Café Rio location but was barred by his colleagues from doing so. So, he took the menu, the recipes, the business model, slapped a new name and face on it, and opened his own restaurant. Costa Vida as we know it was born. This story is likely untrue. Costa Vida founders deny such allegations, claiming that their restaurant’s origins are far-removed from Café Rio. And in 2007, a Utah state court determined that Costa Vida’s founding was not an infringement on Café Rio’s intellectual property or legal trademarks.
Whatever the true origin of Costa Vida be, almost every Utahn and Utah transplant has chosen a side in the Café Rio vs. Costa Vida dispute. Café Rio’s branding pays homage to its Mexican inspiration and uses classic red and yellow colors. Costa Vida appeals to Utahns’ longing to not be scraping ice off windshields or spreading salt on the sidewalk by bringing beachy themes to our mountainous region. Café Rio now offers a tostada, and Costa Vida now offers a burrito bowl on their menu. Many Café Rio locations now include drive-thru windows. Costa Vida is closed on Sundays, which is rallied and praised by other Sabbath day observers.
I was first exposed to Costa Vida in the summer of 2015; even now, there are no Costa Vida locations in my hometown. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I was offended to find a nearly identical establishment robbing Café Rio of its well-deserved customer base. My loyalties lied with Café Rio and had for seven years. I didn’t need to enable Costa Vida in their plagiaristic lair of cultural appropriation. I swore an oath to never eat Costa Vida again.
2018. Against my better judgement, I moved to Rexburg, Idaho for college. The Café Rio is located right across the street from campus, so I stopped there for lunch. Food: 4/10. Ambiance: 0/10. Service: -64/10. I gave Café Rio the benefit of the doubt and decided to give it another chance. Restaurants, like early 2000s one-hit-wonder Daniel Powter, have bad days. I went back, and it was almost as if the Café Rio employees were saying oh, you’re not enjoying your experience? Then go to the other Café Rio location… oh wait. There isn’t one. My experience was equally bad.
One day, my brother and sister-in-law invited me to grab a bite to eat with them. I was “down for whatever” and they were “down for Costa Vida” and I was “down for literally anything else” and they were “down to go without me” because I “don’t get to say ‘down for whatever’ and then not actually be down for whatever.”
Anyway, we went to Costa Vida. Food: 10/10. Ambiance: 10/10. Service: 10/10.
My loyalty shifted. I became a Costa Vida advocate.
My affinity for Costa Vida was real. Lasting. Unwavering. When I moved away from Idaho and to Provo, Utah, I lived within walking distance from the Costa Vida restaurant and spent an irresponsible amount of money on enchiladas and salads. And I regret nothing.
A few months ago, I moved to a new apartment, still here in Provo. Though I really didn’t move far, it is a smidge farther from the Costa Vida than I would like to walk. And, of course, I could drive there, but the parking situation makes things unnecessarily complicated. Simply getting into the parking lot is a seemingly impossible task. Finding a parking spot is harder than finding rhyme or reason in Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover.
Out of convenience, I decided to take a step back from Costa Vida. After all, Café Rio is equal distance from my new apartment, and they’re kinda sorta the same thing, and they have a drive thru. My loyalty had shifted back to Café Rio, and for three months my restored devotion to Café Rio was going wonderfully.
Until…
…the incident.
On Tuesday, I wasn’t in the mood to cook dinner. Even if I had been in the mood to cook dinner, I hadn’t been grocery shopping in weeks. I didn’t have food to cook if I wanted to.
I hopped in my car and zippy-zipped on over to Café Rio, and
ordered my usual salad with their signature sweet pork. What happened next was
so traumatic, I did what every normal person does when something traumatic
happens—I tweeted about it:
Was I actually crying?
Listen. It’s the end of the semester. I have like 10 papers, 25 review assignments, 80 exams, 150 final projects, and just short of a million broken dreams to sort through. My sleep tracking app is warning me to seek urgent medical attention. I am perpetually stressed. And I will be until the semester ends in a couple more weeks. I was relying heavily, if not entirely, on this Café Rio tostada to get me through the night’s workload.
So… yes.
I threw the tostada in the fridge so I could eat it once I found time to pick up a bottle of ranch dressing from Walmart. I boiled a brick of stale ramen that I found in the back of my pantry to hold over my growling stomach for the night.
Imagine my surprise when I opened my Twitter app the next
day to find that Costa Vida had become aware of my plight with their
rival.
Ok, pause. Can we just admire, for a second, the fact that the person running Costa Vida social media is keyword searching “Café Rio” and swooping in to appease disgruntled Café Rio customers? It’s probably just some BYU Digital Marketing intern that isn’t getting paid nearly enough for their innovative tactics. Ok, resume.
Of course, I DM’d Costa Vida to cash in on their offer. They took my information and added rewards credit to my Costa Vida app. “This should cover your salad, and maybe even some churros or chips and queso, if you’d like!”
On Thursday, I took my free rewards points and enjoyed my free pork salad at lunch. It made me so happy, I spent the rest of the day floating through the world on a cloud. Costa Vida has won over my heart, once again.
Your move, Café Rio.
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