It’s 2 AM on a Saturday night. Harvard students are packed into El Jefe’s Taqueria, shouting out to friends further in line in hopes of purchasing their favorite bean and cheese burrito a few minutes faster. The tables and chairs are pushed into the corner of the restaurant in a failed attempt to create enough space for the raucous congregation of students.
This scene is no more.
On August 11th, 2022, El Jefe’s moved slightly closer to Harvard Yard and right next door to Felipe’s, its top competitor for late-night Mexican eats. In the recently renovated Abbot building at the intersection of Brattle and John F. Kennedy Street, the new location maintains El Jefe’s metal awning, wooden panel accents, and signature kitschy slogans highlighting available food options, like “picante” above a display of all their hot sauces. But it now features an upgraded facade, an upper mezzanine for extra seating, and two entrances, one on JFK Street for dining, and one on Brattle Street for delivery, which can be converted into a second ordering queue during busy hours.
At the previous location on the Garage at 83 Mount Auburn Street, workers “were on top of each other, trying to prepare an order while trying to greet a customer,” said El Jefe’s regional manager John Eller. He anticipates that the new design “will speed up the ordering process,” improve the customer experience, and ameliorate the raucous 2 AM burrito lines.
After the renovation of the Garage was announced, the management team at El Jefe’s management was “left scrambling to find a new space,” but the vacancy in the Abbot building suited their needs to accommodate extensive foot traffic.
Not all students have been pleased with the move. “Aw hell nah they gentrified Jefe’s,” commented David Kennedy-Yoon ’23 on Twitter. Concerned that an affordable eating venue will be replaced by a tourist trap, he told the Independent, “Jefe’s should be a place where you can go at 1 am… and get a delicious burrito for cheap. Now that they have exposed brick and those metal stools, I’m not excited to pay $15 for tacos.” However, at this point, the food prices, the atmosphere, and the expected clientele of the new location remain unchanged.
“I’m going to miss the old location,” said Robert Lawrence ’25 when he visited the new restaurant after hearing rumors of its opening. “But I feel like I can still have a pretty rowdy time here, and maybe actually have space to eat inside.”
The day the new Jefe’s opened its doors, the old Jefe’s was still open. The staff at served their last customers the Garage with free extras as they tried to use the remaining ingredients in store. But with fajitas already on the grill at the new location in preparation for a big night of service, El Jefe’s will continue to fulfill the promise of its motto: “come for breakfast, stay for dinner, 7 days a week!”
Seattle Hickey ’25 (seattlehickey@college.harvard.edu) hopes El Jefe’s stops charging for extra queso.