At Red Iguana 2, a festively-painted cantina on Salt Lake City’s eclectic Temple Street, diners come for Xochitónal, the 33ft-long lizard in the carpark. But they stay for the authentic Mexican cuisine, competitively-priced drinks, attentive service and irresistible party atmosphere.
Red Iguana‘s signature mole coloradito – a luscious blend of chocolate, pine nuts and guajillo chiles, blended with fresh poblano and served with carnitas – is enough to warm the heart of even the coldest-blooded critter.
In a city where a slice of lukewarm pizza is considered gourmet fare (and I can say that because I grew up in Wyoming. And not the fancy-pants American Wyoming, either. The Australian Wyoming, where dinner-and-a-show consists of picking up a few cheeseburgers at Maccas and then splatting the pickles on parked cars), it’s no surprise the locals are willing to line up around the block for a piping-hot plate of cochinita pibil, lovingly garnished with pickled red onion.
But enough about Red Iguana’s exquisite array of quesadillas and fajitas. We’re here to talk about the big guy out the front. After all, this iguana is hard to ig-nore!
Red Iguana co-owner Bill Coker cooked up the plan in 2014, after encountering a concrete iguana – yes, THAT concrete iguana – while on holidays in Mexico with his lovely wife Lucy Cardenas.
“My first intention was to make it concrete; I wanted it to be indestructible,” Bill told the SLC Tribune. “I wanted children to come up to it with their mouths open, asking, ’Daddy, is that alive?’”
Whilst Bill knows his way around a taco, he lacked the world-class artistic skills such a project demanded. Then one day he happened upon an article about a remarkable young man who would be perfect for the job.
That man was Stephen ‘Tusk’ Kesler.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard
Tusk hired out a warehouse in downtown SLC and spent the next two years working on the Red Iguana sculpture. Bill – wanting his Big Thing to be as memorable as his food – certainly didn’t skink on the construction costs!
“I chose Stephen because he likes doing realistic animals, not cartoons,” Bill said proudly.
Tusk first built a 1/6 scale model of the Red Iguana out of clay. He scanned that into his computer and, in a process that would bamboozle the world’s greatest minds, created a blueprint for the full-sized critter.
He fed that into a fancy 3D printer, which spat out giant styrofoam pieces that he put together into the shape of the Iguana. Steve then slathered the whole thing in more than 600lb of clay. After that, he covered the varmint in thousands of ceramic rep-tiles.
The Iguana was then sliced into bite-sized pieces once again. Silicone molds were made from those. Fiberglass body parts were made from the molds. The Iguana was then reassembled, and Tusk spent countless sleepless nights painting the lizard its trademark crimson hue.
The critter was christened ‘Xochitónal’, after a gigantic iguana in Aztec mythology who guarded the Underworld.
”Bill and Lucy know what it takes to bring this kind of thing to life,” Tusk said at the time. “I don’t think any other restaurant owners would have had the patience or the understanding to get it done.
“I wouldn‘t do this for anyone. I’m a huge fan of their food!”
The 1000lb squamate was then loaded onto the back of a flatbed truck and, with the help of a police escort, driven through the streets of Salt Lake City.
After months of anticipation, The Red Iguana was ready to be served to famished public.
The Whole Enchilada
After several hours admiring Xochitónal in the balmy Utah afternoon, Bigella Fernandez Hernandez and I had worked up quite an appetite. We popped into the Red Iguana and were seated at an exquisite table overlooking the Oquirrh Mountains.
“Have you tried Mexican food before?” I asked Miss Hernandez Fernandez, who simply rolled her eyes at me.
Peppers popped on an open flame. Margaritas glinted in the golden sunlight. A waitress waltzed over to take our order, and I assured Bigella that I would handle things.
“¡Hola hombre!” I said smugly. “¡No busco tractores y guapos! ¡Quiero un aerodeslizador! ¡Antonio Banderas! ¡Spasibo!”
The waitress just shook her head, obviously surprised to hear a gringo speaking perfect Spanish. As she left in a daze, I turned my attention back to Bigella.
“I picked up a little español while living in the remote Mexican village of Cancún for six days back in 2022,” I informed her. “Let me know if you need any help with the menu.”
Imagine my surprise when, rather than the virgin cocteles I had so expertly ordered, the waitress placed two small bottles of cerveza in front of us. In a moment of madness, I took a sip from the Modelo, and spent the rest of the afternoon fearing that I was tumbling into alcoholism.
“Swap this out for a non-alcoholic piña colada, mami,” I wretched, as the waitress plonked plates of Mexican delicacies in front of us.
“Watch out, Mexican food – though delicious – can be too spicy for a chalupita like you” I warned, tucking into a decadent tostada. Bigella, ever the daredevil, ladled fiery chile verde onto her chimichangas and stuffed them into her mouth. Not wanting to be upstaged, I poured an entire bottle of habanero sauce onto my superbly-prepared gringa and crammed it into my gob.
The pain was indescribable, and for a moment my life flashed before my very eyes (criminy, did I visit a lot of big lizards – such as Joanna the Goanna, The Big Thorny Devil, Gonzo and Lizzo!). When I awoke, stripped to the waist, I was laying in the carpark, with Xochitónal gazing down on me in disgust.
“Señor Bardot, eres el hombre más bobo que he conocido. Si no fueras el experto de atracciones de gran tamaño más famoso del mundo, te dejaría tirado en esa zanja.”
“Wait a second!” I spluttered. “You can speak Indonesian?”
