Blue Water Taco Grill
1001 Fourth Ave Plaza, 264-8950
Mon-Fri 7 am-4 pm.

Warning: This article contains many references to the new Central Library, which may prove dangerous for readers already sick of the hype.

During the frenzy of the library's opening week, a friend--a much fancier kind of writer than I am--had an interview with his Remness and somehow managed to pull Andrew and me along to one of the pre-opening parties. I was pretty excited by the library's chutes and ladders, but the hors d'oeuvres didn't live up to the location: tired old lemongrass beef skewers (free), pillowy, bland humbao (free), and rubbery spring rolls (free). Okay, the shrimp toasts (also free) were pretty good, and since it was complimentary, I shouldn't complain. But nibbling on so-so appetizers inside that mountain of glass made me wonder if there was a better way to eat and take in the library at the same time.

Apparently the answer is no.

There is a cute Farestart espresso cart near the library's fifth-floor entrance, but if you need more than a biscotto, you're out of luck. Up at Pellini, on the 28th floor of the Madison Renaissance Hotel, you'd think you'd get a pretty good view of the library, but in order to see it, you need to press your nose against the glass and stare straight down. From that view, the library looks squat and unremarkable, its rooftop fans buzzing like a couple of houseflies.

There are some Fourth Avenue options. On opening day we sat outside at Sazerac and watched the crowd snake around several blocks. In the air was the universal sound of a lame city gathering: the beat beat beat of a seemingly ad hoc drum circle. From our glaring steel-topped table, our oblique view of the library was partially obstructed by a large maple tree, oddly enough leaving the still visible base of the library looking a little like the old one. Service that morning was shuffling along nearly as slowly as the library line, but I did promptly receive my Virgin Mary, which arrived garnished with, I kid you not, a celery stick, an onion, an olive, a lemon wedge, and a maraschino cherry ($4.25). It was so loaded with black pepper, horseradish, and hot sauce that it could have doubled as cocktail sauce and it burned a hole in my empty belly. After a considerable hiatus, we received passable French toast with bananas in a thin caramel sauce ($9.95) and "eggs in hell": soft-cooked eggs served with a nice slurry of red beans and overcooked slices of rather tasty homemade Cajun sausages ($9.75). But despite these moderate successes, and Sazerac's very tasty café au lait, the brunch was charmless (and a brunch without charm is hardly brunch at all).

Two days later, I stared at a readymade shrimp cocktail sunk in its ice bath along the assembly line at Blue Water Taco Grill. "I'd like a fish taco, a prawn taco, and a small Blue Water caesar, please," I repeated for the third time, this time to a middle-aged manager type. "A caesar?" he said accusingly. "Did you tell anyone?" Oy. Among all the depressing Mexi-fresh restaurants in town, I may have found the champion. Unfortunately the window seating at Blue Water also happens to have perhaps the most untrammeled restaurant view of the library, which is directly across the street. And so the steel-and-glass grid filled my eyes as I dug into my sorry tacos, both wrapped in soggy, oversized white-flour tortillas. The fish taco ($2.95) boasted a large breaded hunk of fish, some goopy white sauce (not to be mistaken for the tangy crema that makes a good fish taco taste good), cheese shreds, and irregular purple shards of cabbage. My prawn taco ($3.50) had some extra-limp lettuce (no cabbage this time) and three or four seriously undercooked prawns. I did get my pre-packed caesar ($4.50) in the end, and it was only slightly more palatable than the tacos.

Clearly the surrounding restaurants have yet to come up with food as cool as the new library. Next time I'll get takeout from Salumi, or even Bakeman's, and bribe someone with a window office in Fourth Avenue Plaza.