Vagabond

Starting off my closest-to-furthest from S. Wayne Manor Quest (estimated, I'm not so anal as to use a map and compass) brought me to Vagabond, 1122 N. Edison St., Milwaukee (former location of Rudy's, and probably some drowned in my own vomit place before that, but that's pre-history, and it's been fully remodeled, I think).

Now, I appreciate a $2 taco Thursday and Tuesday as much as the next guy, but it's kind of annoying that only a select few of the tacos on the menu honor this deal, but I ordered three—three different kinds of meat—and endured the music. In my time of dinner, I didn't hear one song I liked, but I did ask my phone for the names of a couple of the artists who particularly made me feel like I was being held to the ground by hairy arms while someone pissed in one ear. Chet Faker (not his real name, of course) and High School Art Class (evoking memories of covering balloons with nasty papier-mache). The tacos were not helped by the nasty papier-mache memory, especially with the white drizzle on one of them that made me glad there was no possible way the chef and I had any kind of history.

The entire front of the restaurant is decked out with hundreds, maybe thousands of old speakers and a DJ setup, though the music was no doubt, at this point coming from a microchip and invisible speakers. The chips, the waitress informed me, are fried in the same oil as wheat items (in reference to my gluten-free concerns) which is nice to hear (that they're fresh) but sad about the wheat (for me, anyway, though it's attentive of the waitress). The tacos are too busy, not unlike having a gutted half-Winnebago as a bar. I'm trying to draw a parallel between the overdone décor and overdone tacos, but I just don't care enough to write this more elegantly. I prefer when tacos don't have so many ingredients that their flavor is more confused than complex, and also fall apart. On the other hand, they were pretty tasty, and that's why Ms. Fork invented the fork, I suppose. How many ingredients should go in a taco, though, ultimately? And what is the ideal ingredient to tortilla ratio? I almost got the “gluten-free” enchiladas, but the waitress looked into the enchilada covering mole, and found it actually wasn't gluten-free. Ultimately, great waitress, pretty good tacos, overwhelming in a bad way décor, and crap music. But then, this place is essentially a Water Street bar, or almost, and I don't set foot into any other places on Water Street, Milwaukee, so what was I really expecting?