A trailing spouse walks into a bar ...

I walked inside and was greeted by the smell of freshly cut lumber and the sweet lullaby sounds of Kenny G. I asked an employee a question and got a confused face in return. They referred to a spiral notepad before finally telling me what I wanted to know.

Sounds like an average trip to Home Depot, no?

Well, in this case, it wasn't. This was actually the first five minutes of my recent visit to Taqueria Tavern, one of West Hartford's newest Mexican restaurants. 

I've written about TT before. Back when they were still building out the space, I poked fun at their makeshift sign, which reminded me of the cover to an old Berenstain Bears book. Surprisingly, the sign is still up.

And now that the place is up and running, I felt the need to try them on for size. 

The Kenny G music seemed like a bad omen. I mean, who wants to eat a taco while listening to Kenny G? I thought dentists had some kind of stranglehold on the rights to that kind of music? 

But I didn't let it bother me.

Not being much of a drinker, I ended up ordering a beer instead of something more decadent. The group I was with got a few margaritas, which, according to their critiques, were quite good.

As for the food, the menu is fairly simple. I do not know if this is temporary, but entrees pretty much fall into two categories: tacos and burritos (and, what with this place being a taqueria, I wouldn't be surprised if this is how the menu will stay). I found my tacos (I got the carnitas) to be rather good but unfortunately sparse in portions. They weren't entrees as much as lunch portions or bar snacks.

Now, I usually complain about how MUCH food restaurants serve (and we wonder why our country is morbidly obese), but looking down at my plate, I kind of felt a bit ripped off. There was no more than a tablespoon of beans and rice that accompanied the tacos. And the tacos themselves were kind of empty. This isn't to say that the food wasn't enjoyable. It certainly was. But with Los Adobes right across the street offering the same food up for, I assume, slightly less price, I would have thought the folks at Taqueria Tavern would have done something to one-up the competition.

Overall, though, I suppose I can't complain. Our server seemed to get a handle on things after a few minutes and the food was decent. The only problem was that I was still hungry by the time the check came.  

Taqueria Tavern is on Park Road in West Hartford, right next to Plan B Burgers.