Nano Wheedan is serving Austin breakfast tacos at a South Philly pop-up

It’s an Austin thing, like SXSW, BBQ, and LBJ.

The breakfast taco. It’s Tex-Mex in a soft flour tortilla wrapped up around scrambled eggs, diced potatoes, shredded cheese, and maybe bacon and slice or two of avocado. They’re sold everywhere in town, much like the baconeggncheese sandwiches we enjoy here.

Simple, filling, portable.

Mount Airy-born Nano Wheedan happens to be Philly’s Austin breakfast taco guy, selling them (as well as handmade tortillas) to people who follow Nano’s Tortillas on Instagram and pick them up in South Philadelphia. On Saturday, Feb. 6, he will be cooking them to order in a pop-up at Herman’s Coffee in Pennsport.

Wheedan, 40, arrived in Austin right out of Harvard to play rock-and-roll. To pay the bills in 2004, he was the first employee hired at Home Slice Pizza, first as bar manager and then as director of operations and eventually as an owner. (Home Slice’s second employee happened to be the kitchen manager, Philip Korshak, who is now South Philly’s underground bagel guy and plans to open a shop in April with Wheedan at 10th and Morris Streets.)

Home Slice’s New York-style pizza captured the hearts of Austinites as well as visitors and transplants from the Northeast. It was an eye-opener to Wheedan. “I saw how elemental bread could be to people who missed this memory of pizza that just didn’t exist down there,” he said. “Over my decade and a half in Austin, I fell in love with fresh flour tortillas, which is really the bread product of central and southern Texas and the Mexican border towns. I always dreamed I would come back to Philadelphia or the Northeast and bring fresh flour tortillas with me and do basically for tortillas what we were doing for pizza.”

Wheedan, who has been working for six years on his flour tortilla technique, did just that. (Nano happens to be a childhood nickname for Nathaniel, and his last name is Whitman. At his 2019 wedding to Carinne Deeds, the couple asked guests to vote on a new last name for them; the results were tabulated and the officiant introduced them as Wheedan.)

At first, Wheedan set up a taco stand in front of his house, on 13th Street near Morris. “I gave them away. I’m yelling at people walking across the street, ‘Hey, would you like to try a taco?’” he said.

He began to hit the food radar, as folks such as Jenn Zavala (@foxyladychef) and Korshak (@korshak.bagels.poetry) began spreading the word. Wheedan set up an Instagram link to an order form, and arranged for customer pickup outside a park. He also has done fund-raisers for 215 People’s Alliance at El Compadre.

» READ MORE: The People’s Kitchen at El Compadre serves free meals and social justice to those in need

“Then I said, ‘OK, there’s a market here,” he said. He rented kitchen space at the Bok Building to prep the tacos and make the tortillas. At noon Tuesdays, his order form goes live on Instagram, and within minutes his 150 tacos are spoken for. Pickup is Saturday.

At this Saturday’s pop-up at Herman’s Coffee (1313 S. Third St.), Wheedan will cook to order for walk-ups starting at 9 a.m.; he will have the ingredients for 450 tacos. His varieties ($3 to $5) include chorizo, egg, and cheese; bacon, egg, cheese, and avocado; migas (whose tortilla chips soak up the ingredients’ juices); and burnt ends, egg, and cheese with smoked burnt ends from Jeff Newman, the chef known as @newmanthefoodman). Even the salsas are made in-house, including tomatillo, roasted tomato guajillo, morita, and creamy jalapeño.

Right now, Wheedan is looking for a bar owner who might be interested in renting him space in the morning so he can sell tacos made to order. Although he is an investor in Korshak’s forthcoming bagel shop, there probably is not enough room during peak hours for both bagels and tacos, although he could make the tortillas at night at the bagel shop.

Ultimately, he’d like to open a Tex-Mex diner with a breakfast taco window that could also be open late night. “I’ve worked late-night pizza windows for many years and is really fun when people can’t walk in the door,” he said.