One of my favorite places to go beer hunting when I'm in Omaha is Spirit World. It was located on Pacific Street next to one of my dealers for years before moving over to the Aksarben Village shopping and entertainment area in Central Omaha earlier this year. I had just come from calling on my dealer who told me where they had moved to. As I pulled up to the new Spirit World location, I saw a restaurant that sort of intrigued me - Voodoo Taco. (see map) It was around 1:30 p.m., I was hungry and I had some time to go get a couple tacos from Voodoo Taco.
Owner/founder/managing partner Eric Newton opened the original Voodoo Taco location in Northwest Omaha in the summer of 2013. He soon opened a second location in the Nebraska Crossing outlet mall in Gretna southwest of Omaha in early 2014 and opened the Aksarben Village location in October of 2014. Voodoo Taco also has a food truck that roams the streets of Omaha and they've also garnered national attention for their "taco cannon" that will shoot foil wrapped tacos at University of Nebraska-Omaha sporting events starting this fall. (Click here to see a report on the taco cannon from Voodoo Taco.)
The Aksarben Village (by the way - if you don't know this, and many people outside of Nebraska usually don't - Aksarben is Nebraska spelled backwards) location for Voodoo Taco is not that large, but it has a trippy contemporary look. It's a cross between nuevo-industrial, art deco/South Beach, and modern wood paneling. Common tables were in the middle and along the windowed west wall, one of which is open wide on nice days. Like the day I was there.
The order counter is upfront and the menu is located on the wall behind the counter. It's tacos, tacos, and more tacos at Voodoo Taco, but they also feature salads, bowls and nachos if you don't want to get just tacos. They feature over a dozen different types of tacos featuring beef, pork, and chicken primarily. There's also an alligator taco, a fried avocado taco, and fried fish or shrimp tacos. Beer is available, but I had a big meeting later on where I wanted to be sharper than normal. So I ended up getting a glass of water out of the fountain machine.
I ended up getting a pork carnitas taco and a grilled mahi mahi taco. (I almost went with the green ghost chile pulled pork taco where the pork is braised with ghost chile peppers, but thought that might be a bit spicy especially with a meeting coming up later in the afternoon.) The pork carnitas came with asadero cheese, cabbage, chopped fresh onions and cilantro on corn tortillas. A lime wedge came with that taco. The pork was tender and had good flavor. It was a fine taco.
The grilled mahi mahi taco also came with cabbage and cilantro, but came with Cotija cheese. A lime wedge also came with the taco. It, too, was a fine taco, nothing earth-shaking, but not bad at all.
Actually, the one thing that got my attention was the sauce that came with the tacos. They have 7 different sauces to choose from at Voodoo Taco - everything from a peppery tomato sauce (which I had), to a tomatillo sauce I wished I'd gotten with garlic and ancho chile peppers (once again, I had a meeting coming up and didn't want to be full of garlic), to something they called Habanero Lightning that featured habaneros, ghost chile peppers, and Trinidad Scorpion peppers. I like spicy, but not that spicy. The peppery tomato salsa featured fire roasted tomatoes and peppers and it was very good.
Voodoo Taco was, well, it was fine. It wasn't eye-popping, there wasn't anything that really jumped out at me in regards to interesting tacos, and the two tacos I had were good - above average good. The atmosphere was nice and funky, the service (they bring your food out to your table after you order at the counter) was acceptable, and it was a fine experience overall. If you're just in the mood for some tacos where you can have a number of choices, Voodoo Taco should be able to fit the bill.
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