How the breakfast taco won over Philadelphia

When West Mount Airy native Nano Wheedan moved back to Philly in 2020, he found himself wishing for the compact breakfast tacos he had come to love during his 15 years living in Austin. “They’re wrapped in foil, they’re on the go, and they make this little perfect mixture of carbs, protein, dairy, and salt,” he says. He tried brunch tacos at Loco Pez and Rosy’s Taco Bar, but they delivered something different than what he had fallen for at Austin icons like Maria’s Taco Xpress and Veracruz All Natural.

Wheedan especially missed breakfast tacos with made-to-order flour tortillas — so ubiquitous in Austin that you can buy them hot off the press at the grocery store — which he says he couldn’t find in Philly’s own breakfast taco scene. “There’s something about the way eggs and cheese melt on the flour — that gummy layer between the inside and the tortilla the way that they can become one thing — it doesn’t really happen with corn,” he says.

» READ MORE: 15 can’t-miss breakfast taco spots in Philly and beyond

Wheedan began making the breakfast tacos he had longed for, handing them out for free from his South Philly doorstep. At first, he had to pitch passersby, but after word spread to food Instagram, he was selling out within minutes. He moved operations to the Bok Building before finding a permanent home in fall 2022 with Taco Heart, his colorful shop at 7th and Passyunk. With 11 different breakfast tacos, plus build-your-own options, it has the widest variety of any shop in town. Its pliant, freshly griddled flour tortillas — which wooed Inquirer critic Craig LaBan — have helped land it on numerous best breakfast lists.

Breakfast tacos have been in Philly for at least 15 years, but Taco Heart’s debut seemed to mark a breakfast-taco renaissance. A deep dive into Philly-area menus turned up at least 25 places offering them, from Chester County to South Jersey and everywhere in between. There are, of course, Tex-Mex breakfast tacos tightly wrapped in foil. But there are also open-face tacos with salsa cooked right into the scrambled eggs, meat-and-potato tacos like what you might buy from a street vendor in Mexico City, and ultra-composed brunch tacos complete with fancy garnishes. In short, Philly’s breakfast taco scene has never been so rich, diverse, or delicious.

A scoop of scrambled eggs, a smattering of crispy potato cubes, plus pico, guacamole, and a sprinkle of cheddar cheese, all crammed into a mini flour tortilla: These are the breakfast tacos that Tom McCusker, a.k.a. Honest Tom, introduced to Philadelphia early on in the food-truck craze.

McCusker first came across breakfast tacos in 2008, when he took a motorcycle trip to Austin, Texas, where they have been a morning staple for decades. (While a major breakfast taco hub, Austin did not originate them.) They were a revelation. “This is exactly what I want for breakfast, something small but still some bacon-egg-and-cheese action, but not on an Amoroso roll,” he says.

McCusker opened a food truck off Drexel University’s campus in ‘09. For $5, you got two made-to-order tacos. At first, he remembers, customers were confused, and a little suspicious. “There were a lot of kids who just came up, like, ‘Dude, is this really a weed front?’”

Soon enough, Drexel students and all of West Philly embraced breakfast tacos. Honest Tom’s had a good run, expanding its menu to lunch, then dinner. The concept went brick-and-mortar in 2011, then vegan in 2018, eliminating breakfast entirely. McCusker got out of the restaurant game a year later, selling the West Philly taco shop to two employees who reopened it as Taco Taco Mexican in fall 2019. (Breakfast tacos are back on the menu.)

Honest Tom’s may have been Philly’s highest-profile purveyor of breakfast tacos in the 2010s, but it didn’t have a lock on them. They featured on brunch menus at Loco Pez and Mission Taqueria, as well as cafes like P.S. & Co. and Fitzwater Cafe, where retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was spotted eating a breakfast taco in 2012. That’s not to mention South Philly Barbacoa’s award-winning lamb tacos, which have prompted early risers to line up on sidewalks for more than a decade — in parts of Mexico and Texas, barbacoa is a cherished breakfast, usually reserved for weekends and special occasions — or the countless non-taco options at stalwarts like Plaza Garibaldi and Cafe y Chocolate, which have been serving up egg-topped chilaquiles and huevos con chorizo for years. More recently, other standard-bearers like Cantina La Martina, Casa Mexico, and Las Bugambilias have also ventured into brunch territory.

Leo Saavedra of the Tacos Don Memo food truck began serving breakfast tacos at the Clark Park farmers market in 2016 after some encouragement from McCusker. They’re now Saavedra’s best-sellers on Saturdays, and it’s easy to see why: Twin tortillas can hardly contain the well-browned scramble of eggs, tomatoes, onions, and cilantro, topped with pristine avocado slices, a little crema, and hot sauce of your choice. Paper plates cradle the tacos, making them neater than most.

While Saavedra has been slinging made-to-order tacos in West Philly since 2007, showcasing recipes he enjoyed in his hometown of Tlapa, Guerrero, he says that it took him a minute to wrap his head around the concept of making a streetside breakfast taco. “To be honest, it’s not very common to sell breakfast tacos in Mexico,” he says.

Philly chefs from various regions of Mexico agree: A scrambled egg taco is typically homemade fare. Go to an early market in Mexico and you’ll find folks eating tacos over coffee, but the tortillas will likely be filled with potatoes and guisados, a wide-ranging category of saucy recipes that feature stewed meats or vegetables, says Israel Nocelo of Point Breeze’s Sí Taqueria. Eggs are so superfluous to this morning equation that they’re offered hard-boiled and chopped, a forgettable garnish.

“Scrambled eggs, you eat them at home,” says Nocelo, a native of Cholula, Puebla. Sure, at his house, he’d whip up eggs with ham and refried beans and serve it with tortillas on the side. But out and about, “scrambled egg tacos with cheese? No, that doesn’t exist,” he says. That’s why only one of Sí Taqueria’s three breakfast tacos features eggs. The other two — birria and chorizo con papas — reflect more traditional a.m. offerings in Mexico, he says. (Yes, birria is also for breakfast.)

Sor Ynez chef Alexis Tellez remembers his grandmother preparing fresh corn tortillas and eggs in the mornings when he was a kid, with queso fresco and ham when they “had a little money.” At age 8, Tellez moved from Nezahualcóyotl, in Estado de Mexico, to Pennsylvania; as a DACA recipient, he hasn’t been able to return. But he says that the humble childhood combo remains cherished. “It is one of the daily staples of the foods I eat — usually just tortilla, egg, beans, queso fresco, and salsa,” he says.

That’s in contrast to Sor Ynez’s elaborate breakfast tacos, offered on the Kensington restaurant’s weekend brunch menu. Two fresh-pressed corn tortillas encase a scramble of eggs, housemade chorizo, heirloom black beans, onions, and serrano, topped off with Oaxaca cheese. Tellez griddles the tacos to give them more structure. “It’s more like a quesadilla kind of thing,” he says. He calls it a “breakfast taco” to signal that “when you take a bite, you know it’s going to be gooey, it’s going to be cheesy.”

Tellez isn’t the only one playing to a crowd. When Carlos Gomez was crafting the breakfast menu for South Philly’s La Catrachita — a food truck turned brick-and-mortar on Columbus Boulevard — bacon, egg, and cheese tacos were a no-brainer. “People like to eat bacon,” he says.

But the Metztitlan, Hidalgo native also recreated a meal that’s near and dear to him. “When I used to go to school,” Gomez says, “my mom used to always make me lunch, usually tacos el huevos,” or tortillas filled with huevos à la Mexicana. It’s an exceptionally simple recipe from a culinary tradition famous for long-simmering sauces built on laundry lists of ingredients.

La Catrachita cook Nancy Perez demonstrates one way to make huevos à la Mexicana, sautéing fresh tomato, onion, and jalapeño before pouring scrambled eggs into the skillet. She mixes it with a fork until cooked through and fluffy, then spoons it onto three doubled-up corn tortillas with mozzarella melted onto them. It takes less than five minutes to cook. The tacos come nestled together, tiny cups of fresh salsa on the side.

In Center City, equally simple yet entirely different breakfast tacos take shape at Hi-Lo Taco Co. at 11th and Walnut, where chef-owner Jeff Newman wraps his in handmade flour tortillas, just like Taco Heart’s. Newman happens to be Wheedan’s cousin, but their inspiration points for breakfast tacos are entirely different. His all-day taco-restaurant concept evolved out of a love of barbecue, as exemplified by his signature burnt ends taco: fluffy eggs, white cheddar, and deeply savory, black pepper-crusted smoked beef. The burnt ends are both an ode to the Texas barbecue Newman had hoped to build a restaurant around, and a riff on the classic Northern Mexican preparation machaca — air-dried, shredded, seasoned beef that’s often mixed with scrambled eggs.

You can score machaca breakfast tacos served on handmade corn tortillas at Camden’s La Ingrata, which launched brunch in March. Co-owner and chef Karla Torres says she modeled the machaca tacos on the stewy tacos de guisado stands of Mexico City. “These stands, typically operated by women, serve breakfast from 6 a.m. to lunch,” she says. “I recall fond memories of my mom stopping by to get me two tacos, with my favorite being the machaca.”

While La Ingrata currently uses imported machaca, Torres says she and husband Ernesto Ventura are working on their own recipe. To balance the salty-savory punch of beef and scrambled eggs, they add avocado, cheese, and crema to the tacos, plus homemade pickled chilies on the side.

South Philly chef Jennifer Zavala served machaca at El Camino Real back in 2009, but she has since become known for her stellar birria; the blockbuster hit enabled Zavala and her husband to open their own spot, Juana Tamale, in 2021. When she added breakfast to the menu a year ago, she didn’t overthink it. Her breakfast tacos come with Smith Poultry-sourced scrambled eggs, onions, cilantro, and lime — plus whatever meat you want, birria included.

Zavala thinks breakfast tacos are still overlooked on the East Coast. “Taco spots ... are the coffee shops of L.A.,” she says. “You always meet everyone, at any time, eating tacos.” She’s heartened by their rise in Philly, but there’s one breakfast taco she’s still waiting for.

“No one has done a hot dog breakfast taco yet,” Zavala says. “I think we’re due for that soon.”