Haute Taco Experience

Tonight we went to dinner at Haute Taco in Sendik's Town Center in Brookfield. If you have never been to Sendik's Town Center in Brookfield, it is one of those planned suburbo-utopian "lifestyle" retail experience complexes that sprang from a cornfield about 3 years ago and, at least tonight, has a semi-deserted quality that made us wonder if we had perhaps wandered onto the grounds of an idyllic FBI training facility or a nuclear test site. Any minute now, a blacked-out van might screech up to the curb and a dozen heavily armed government operatives tumble out, crash through the plate glass window at one of the supposed furniture shops, and start doing target practice while ply-board cutouts of "friendlies" and "hostiles" pop up at random from behind Barcaloungers and knockoff Noguchi coffee tables.

But I digress. Haute Taco bills itself as a "modern taqueria" -- whatever that means -- and prides itself on using all-natural, fresh ingredients. The food was decent, but someone needs to inform the staff that "haute" does not rhyme with "pot" or "sot."

Things we liked:

• The guacamole
• The chips
• The braised short rib taco
• The mushroom burrito
• The chicken taco
• The music!

Things we weren't so (ahem) hot about:

• The salsas (three varieties, and none had any heat)
• The size of the plates (so small our food was spilling over the edge, which leaves no room for maneuvering)
• The duck taco (it works much better as a burrito bowl)
• The fact that if you wanted rice and beans, you had to order them as two separate side dishes

We wouldn't avoid the place in the future, but there are many more restaurants in the area that we want to try, so it may be a while before we go back.