Asma Khan | |
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 Khan in 2023 | |
| Born | July 1969 (age 54) Calcutta, West Bengal, India |
| Culinary career | |
Current restaurant(s)
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Asma Khan (born July 1969) is an Indian-born British restaurateur and cookbook author. She owns Darjeeling Express restaurant in London's Soho and was profiled on the sixth season of the documentary series Chef's Table . In June 2019 Business Insider named her number 1 on their list of "100 Coolest People in Food and Drink".
Khan was born in July 1969 [1] [2] and grew up in Calcutta. [3] She has an older sister [4] and a younger brother. Her family lamented the birth of a second daughter instead of the desired son. [4] According to Khan "there is a deafening silence" in India about the disappointment a family feels at having a second daughter. [4] She has said that she and her siblings were treated equally by her parents, and that she and her mother "made peace while I was still very young." [5] Her father is Rajput from western Uttar Pradesh. [3] Her mother is from West Bengal and had a catering business in the 1970s and 1980s. [3] [6] According to Khan, her father and grandfather worked to unionize laborers in India. [7] Khan attended La Martiniere in Calcutta.
Khan had an arranged marriage and immediately afterward moved with her husband to Cambridge in 1991. [8] She had never learned to cook [9] and missed the dishes she had grown up eating. [10] She first started learning to cook from an aunt who lived in Cambridge. [11] After her aunt died, Khan returned to India for a visit of a few months [10] to continue lessons with her mother and the family's cook. [11] [12] She told Francis Lam that learning to cook from her mother helped their relationship. [6]
In 1996 her husband moved to SOAS University of London to teach, [11] and Khan started studying law at King's College London. She graduated with a PhD in British Constitutional Law in 2012. [3]
In 2012, [13] after obtaining her PhD, Khan started offering a series of private supper clubs in her home for a dozen people for £35 each. [3] [11] [14] [7] Vivek Singh attended one and invited her to host a pop-up at his restaurant, The Cinnamon Club. [10] Eventually the supper clubs grew to serving 45, [7] and in 2015, after her family complained, [14] [15] she moved the supper clubs to a Soho pub, Sun and 13 Cantons, and started serving lunches instead. [13] [11] [16] She struggled early on to lead her team of home cooks, mostly local immigrants working for the first time in a professional kitchen, but then a review by Fay Maschler helped bring in customers. [13] [14] [15]
Simon Quayle, a regular customer and executive director of Shaftesbury, offered her the opportunity to compete for a lease in Soho. [10] When an investor backed out, Khan's husband gave her the money she needed, although he disapproved of the business. [3] Khan opened Darjeeling Express, a 56-seat location [7] offering Indian Rajput and Bengali [13] home cooking specialties, [4] in 2017 in Soho. [3] She named the restaurant after a train she rode as a child during summer holidays. [17] Her team consisted of Asian immigrant women who all had full-time jobs and were never trained professionally; they worked for Khan on their days off but were able to cut back hours at their other jobs and eventually give them up altogether. [14] [18] Most of the all-female kitchen staff [8] [19] at the restaurant are second daughters. [4] All are South Asian. [1] Food & Wine called Darjeeling Express a "smash hit". [20] Khan was profiled by the BBC in a short documentary. [10]
In 2018 her cookbook, Asma's Indian Kitchen, [3] was published by Pavilion Books. [21] The San Francisco Chronicle called it a "stellar debut". [22] It was shortlisted for the 2018 World Gourmand award for Best Indian Cookbook. [10] [23]
Khan was approached by Brian McGinn, producer of Chef's Table , to be the first British chef profiled on the series. [11] [7] Filming started in London and India in July 2018 with Zia Mandviwalla directing. [11] [14] Khan recalls Mandviwalla, who was born in Mumbai and lives in New Zealand, "did not ask me pointless questions about my husband and marriage, I did not need to explain what my mother meant to me, she got it." [11] The programme first aired in February 2019. Khan is the first British chef to be featured. [3] [4] [11] [13] The series' sixth season's theme is "the journey home". [13] The season, which included Khan's episode, was nominated for an Emmy in the outstanding documentary section. [24] According to Bloomberg it became difficult to get a reservation at Darjeeling Express after the series aired. [25]
Business Insider named her number 1 on their 2019 list of "100 Coolest People in Food and Drink". [1] Danny DeVito offered to invest in an expansion. [7]
Khan closed the restaurant The Darjeeling Express in March 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. [26] By the end of the year she had reopened in Covent Garden in a 120-seat space serving tasting menus. [7] [27] Khan has also been outspoken about the importance of her presence and the restaurant's in the cultural and social landscape in Europe. [28] [29]
On Sundays, when Darjeeling Express is closed, Khan offers free use of the premises to women who are aspiring chefs and restaurateurs who would like to host supper clubs. [11] [30] When Khan gave up the Soho space, she arranged with her landlord to allow Imad Alarnab, a Syrian refugee who had been running a pop-up restaurant, to use the space for the remainder of the lease. [7]
Khan's restaurants support a non-profit, Second Daughters Fund, which encourages families in India to celebrate the births of second daughters by sending packages of sweet treats to be shared with neighbors. [4] [14]
In July 2019, to mark her 50th birthday, Khan traveled to Northern Iraq to open an all-women cafe for survivors of ISIS at the Essyan refugee camp. [1] [7] [31]
In 2022, she was appointed the Chef Advocate for the United Kingdom (a WFP Goodwill Ambassador) by the UN World Food Programme. [32]
Khan is married to Mushtaq, an academic. [3] According to Khan, he is not a fan of her food, preferring simple dishes and finding hers too complex. [3] The couple have two sons. [13] [3] [11]
In May 2022 she was made an Honorary Fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford. [33] [34]
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