If you have ever wandered the snack aisle at an Indian grocery store in Plano, Irving or Frisco, you already know the name. Haldiram’s bags of bhujia are about as familiar in Indian households as ketchup is in American ones. Now the company behind them is opening its first restaurant in the United States, and it chose Frisco.
Haldiram’s Frisco opens Sunday, October 11, at 7010 Preston Road, Suite 240. It is a full-service, casual restaurant of about 4,400 square feet with seating for 110, plus a retail area stocked with the brand’s packaged sweets and snacks. Dallas-Fort Worth is the starting point for the company’s restaurant expansion in the U.S.
The choice of Frisco is no accident. North Texas has one of the largest Indian communities in the country. Federal Reserve Bank research puts DFW’s Indian population at roughly 163,000, the second largest of any American metro area, and in Frisco, Asian residents now make up more than a third of the city’s roughly 245,000 people. Anyone who has driven the Preston Road and Highway 121 corridors lately has seen the result: sweet shops, dosa houses, Hyderabadi biryani spots and grocery stores packed on a Saturday. Haldiram’s is walking into a market that already knows exactly who it is.
The story behind the brand goes back nearly 90 years. Haldiram’s started in 1937 as a small bhujia shop in Bikaner, a desert city in Rajasthan known for its crunchy, spiced chickpea-flour snack. From that one counter it grew into one of India’s biggest food companies, with products sold in more than 80 countries and more than 200 restaurants across North India. In India, a Haldiram’s restaurant is a familiar sight, a bright, busy place where families stop for chaat after shopping and leave with a box of sweets.
The U.S. push is being led by Pankkaj Agarwal, managing director of Haldiram Snacks, along with Rhea Agarwal, the company’s commercial director for the U.K. and E.U. and part of the family’s third generation. She also led the brand’s first U.K. restaurant, which opened this summer in London’s Leicester Square and drew long lines of homesick diners in its first weeks. Frisco is the next step.
The menu leans on the dishes Haldiram’s is known for at home: street food, chaat, traditional thalis and sweets. Expect Raj Kachori, a big, crisp shell filled with potatoes, chickpeas, yogurt and chutneys that is often called the king of chaats. There is Choley Bhature, the North Indian favorite of spicy chickpea curry served with puffy, deep-fried bread, and for dessert, Rasmalai, soft cheese dumplings soaked in sweetened, cardamom-scented milk. The thalis, a full meal served in small bowls on a single platter, are a good way to taste a little of everything on a first visit.
The timing is good, too. The restaurant opens on the first day of Navratri, the nine-night Hindu festival that runs through October 19 this year, and the restaurant will offer a special menu of traditional fasting-friendly dishes for the occasion. During Navratri, many observers skip grains, onion and garlic, so the menu will help a lot of local families celebrate without cooking at home.
For Indian diners in North Texas, the appeal is easy to understand. This is a taste of home from a name they grew up with. For everyone else, it may be one of the most approachable introductions to North Indian street food in the area, and the retail counter means you can take home a bag of bhujia or a box of kaju katli, the diamond-shaped cashew sweets, before you leave.
Haldiram’s Frisco is a big bet on DFW, and it adds weight to something that has been obvious for a while. Collin County has quietly become one of the most interesting places in Texas to eat Indian food. If the opening weekend in London was any indication, expect a crowd.
Haldiram’s Frisco opens Sunday, October 11, at 7010 Preston Road, Suite 240, in Frisco.
