Hi-Lo Taco Co. brings a Tex-Mex bar and family friendly vibes to Center City

“Since I was 14, I said I’d own a restaurant by the time I was 30,” Jeff Newman said. “I’m making it happen at 35.”

This week brought the debut of his restaurant, Hi-Lo Taco Co., at 1109 Walnut St. in Washington Square West. It’s a bright, airy Tex-Mex eatery with a 12-seat bar, wide-spaced tables (the better to wheel in strollers), and a menu of dishes cooked from scratch, including house-smoked meats. Though open now for dinner only Tuesday to Saturday, it’s intended to be family-friendly during the day (i.e., kids’ menu and baby changers in the bathrooms) but aimed at grown-ups after dinner.

“Hi-Lo” covers Newman’s professional life, as in fancy and casual. His 20 years in the business includes work on the opening teams of a pizzeria and osteria in Singapore, an Eataly location in New York City, and a Mario Batali Italian restaurant in Hong Kong. Back Stateside, he was chef de cuisine of a large Italian restaurant in San Francisco, followed by culinary director of a restaurant group in San Francisco that led to work as a consultant. Upon arriving in Philadelphia shortly before the pandemic, he hosted fundraisers with the nonprofit People’s Kitchen before deciding to go into business.

Newman launched Hi-Lo Taco in late 2021 as a twice-weekly pop-up out of Sarvida and then in Fishtown.

His new brick-and-mortar shop, the former Bareburger across from the Forrest Theater, is the extension of that.

As a cuisine, Tex-Mex is familiar and lowbrow but lends itself to quality, Newman said. Hi-Lo is an “everyday, approachable restaurant — Tex-Mex through and through,” he said. “The heart and soul of the kitchen is really our handmade flour tortillas and our smoker.” He fries heirloom corn chips for the queso.

“We’re a place that’s not taking ourselves too seriously,” he said. “We’re approachable, but we’re also trying to be thoughtful and make sure we’re buying good produce and showing off vegetables. We’re taking that food, which historically is very heavy and gluttonous and caloric, and while we’re still creating that, we’re doing it in a little more contemporary way.”

Instead of the ubiquitous yellow cheddar, Hi-Lo uses Abundantly Good white cheddar from Sunset Farm in Ronks, Lancaster County.

For every pound of the cheddar that Newman buys for the breakfast tacos and queso, he donates $1 to Philabundance, Philadelphia’s largest hunger relief organization. He also donated 10% of all sales from its recent soft opening to Prevention Point to promote health, empowerment, and safety for communities affected by drug use and poverty.

Hi-Lo will add breakfast and lunch in early 2024. The average dinner check should be about $30 per person for tacos, a shared app, and a drink, he said. At breakfast, where his customers should come from the Jefferson Hospital community, he projects to sell two tacos and a coffee out of the takeout window for $10 to $13. “Lunch, likewise, we’re going to be really focused on speed, convenience, and portability,” he said, estimating a typical spend of $12 to $15.

Besides breakfast tacos served all day, the taco menu will include guajillo barbecue chicken, smash burger, chicken fajita, grilled fish, mushroom asada, and cauliflower tinga. There’s a selection of salads, grain bowls, and wings and tostadas.

Currently, Hi-Lo is full-service, but Newman plans to institute a hybrid system that will allow tabletop QR menus for ordering with food delivered to the table (not the usual customer counter pickup).

The bar is stocked with additive-free tequila and mezcals, draft and bottled beers, wines, and cocktails made with and without alcohol. There’s a “Chupito,” a pair of shot-size cocktails for toasting, and a $10 “Boot + a beer” that pairs a shot of Casca Viejo Blanco tequila and a can of Tecate.

Newman describes Hi-Lo’s management style as “thoughtful and wholesome. There is an ethos, as with many chefs and restaurateurs of my generation, trying to create a different work environment. I worked in a lot of Michelin-star and chef-driven restaurants and those things are wonderful, but they put a large amount of tax on the people, executing them.”

Newman said the restaurant pays servers above minimum wage, “so they can make a more stable dependable salary and then that also legally allows us to take some of those tips and share it with the kitchen. I’m erring on the side of generosity, and I hope our business is there and our sales are there and the support from Philly is there in a way that allows us to continue down this path and even grow it.”

Current hours are 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday and 4 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Happy hour: 4 to 6 p.m., Tuesday to Saturday. It’s ADA-accessible.