Allen: Panj Tara opens north Indian restaurant as community honors Aishwarya Thatikonda
Allen, a fast-growing suburb north of Dallas, is adding a South Asian culinary landmark with the arrival of Panj Tara, a north Indian restaurant bringing dishes such as chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, shahi paneer, and butter naan to the local dining scene. The suburb also carries lasting significance for the Indian-American community as the site of the May 2023 mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets mall, in which Aishwarya Thatikonda, an Indian engineer from nearby McKinney, was among eight people killed just days before her 28th birthday. Following the tragedy, the Telugu Association of North America stepped in to support her family and help coordinate the repatriation of her remains to India.
🍛 Panj Tara brings north Indian flavors to Allen's expanding restaurant scene
The Allen suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth area is welcoming a new north Indian restaurant called Panj Tara, which was highlighted among five recent business and restaurant updates tracked by Community Impact. The publication notes that Panj Tara's menu features a range of well-loved north Indian dishes, including chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, shahi paneer, and butter naan, all described as available according to the restaurant's website. Panj Tara's arrival comes as Allen's commercial landscape continues to evolve, with Community Impact providing residents regular updates on new business openings, closures, and coming-soon announcements across the suburb. Also featured in the same roundup was The Melting Pot, a Florida-based fondue dining chain founded in 1975 that was preparing to open in Allen, offering patrons a variety of fondue cooking styles. Community Impact noted that its list of five updates was not intended to be comprehensive but rather a curated selection of notable activity in the local business and restaurant sector. The restaurant roundup reflects Allen's status as a city whose dining scene is growing alongside its population, with South Asian cuisine now becoming a visible and welcome part of that expansion. Panj Tara represents the kind of culinary addition that speaks to Allen's increasingly diverse community and the appetite among residents for authentic north Indian cooking in a convenient suburban setting. [1]
Indian engineer Aishwarya Thatikonda remembered among victims of Allen Premium Outlets shooting
Aishwarya Thatikonda, a 27-year-old engineer from India living in the Dallas suburb of McKinney, was among the eight people fatally shot during the mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets mall on May 6, 2023, according to BBC News reporting on the victims. Thatikonda was less than a week away from her 28th birthday at the time of the attack and had been visiting the mall with a friend who was wounded in the shooting but survived. A family representative confirmed her death in the days following the tragedy. Thatikonda had completed her undergraduate degree in civil engineering in India in 2018 before moving to the United States, where she went on to earn a master's degree in construction management from Eastern Michigan University in 2020. At the time of her death she had been working for two years at a Dallas-based contracting firm on a US work visa. The Telugu Association of North America played a key role in supporting her family following the shooting, helping to coordinate the repatriation of her remains to India. The shooting also claimed the lives of the Cho family — Korean-American parents Cho Kyu Song and Kang Shin Young along with their three-year-old son James — who had been at the mall to exchange a birthday gift for their six-year-old, who survived as the sole remaining family member. Seven others were injured in the attack, some with multiple gunshot wounds. [4]
Sources: [1] Community Impact · [4] BBC