Taco Heart brings Austin-style breakfast tacos to South Philly

Mount Airy native Nano Wheedan’s long road to opening a restaurant in Philadelphia this week began in 2005 when — as an aspiring pro musician and recent Harvard grad newly transplanted to Austin, Texas — he took a job at the opening of Home Slice Pizza to pay the bills.

Also on Home Slice’s Day One, Wheedan met a baker named Philip Korshak. (We’ll get to him later.)

While moving up in the trendy, expanding pizzeria, from bartender to manager to director of operations, Wheedan fell in love with an Austinite, Carinne Deeds, as well as the breakfast tacos, the egg-and-cheese-filled flour-tortilla specialty that is the Southwest answer to the Northeast’s baconeggandcheese sandwiches.

Intrigued with how flour tortillas puff up when they hit the griddle (or comal), he began learning to make his own as he backed off his dream of musical stardom.

After the couple married and moved to South Philadelphia, Wheedan set up a taco stand in front of their house, on 13th Street near Morris. Many locals didn’t get it at first. “I gave them away,” he said. “I’m yelling at people walking across the street, ‘Hey, would you like to try a taco?’”

Nano’s Tortillas, the name at the time, began to hit the food radar, and Wheedan set up an order form on Instagram, and began a pandemic gig making tacos at a Bok Building kitchen and arranging for customer pickup.

» READ MORE: Nano Wheedan shares his love of breakfast tacos

Meanwhile, Wheedan’s old friend Korshak had moved to Philadelphia, with an eye to opening a bagel shop. Wheedan joined him as an investor in Korshak’s Bagels, which opened to acclaim in May 2021 at 10th and Morris Streets.

Wheedan got the itch for his own shop and found a triangle-shaped building where Seventh Street and Passyunk Avenue cross, just north of Washington Avenue.

It’s called Taco Heart. The name change?

“This restaurant is not about me,” Wheedan said last week in the kitchen, where a team of workers mixed and rolled flour tortillas for pressing. “When I worked at Home Slice, I loved the owners. I always felt like it wasn’t about them, and I really appreciated that.”

To manage crowds at least initially, Wheedan has instituted an online slotting system to allow preorders. The shop is open from 7 to 11 a.m. Wednesday to Friday, and 8 to 11 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.

Though the specialty is the handmade flour tortilla, Wheedan will offer corn tortillas from the nearby Tortilleria San Roman. Customers can walk in without reservations to buy tortillas, puffy chips, and queso (for dipping), guacamole, housemade salsas and drink mixers, and beverages.