Asma Khan & Darjeeling Express

Darjeeling Express is one of the restaurants I had been wanting to visit for years, and I finally made it happen on my last trip to London.

My fascination with the restaurant actually began when I watched Asma Khan on Netflix’s Chef’s Table. She was the first British chef, also the first Indian origin Chef to be featured on the series, and the season featuring her episode was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series. This should give you an idea of just how beautiful that episode is.

Picture courtesy to BBC Good Food

Since then, I’ve become increasingly drawn not just to her cooking, but also to her voice. She was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People, recognised for her influence on food and social progress. She is also an author, and I particularly enjoy reading her writing and opinions in The Guardian and The Independent. Her writing often goes well beyond food, touching on immigration, women’s rights, inequality and the politics of who gets to cook, eat and belong.

But what makes Asma’s story so fascinating is that food wasn’t where she started.

 

She was a journalist in India, moved to Cambridge after marriage, studied law and completed a PhD in British Constitutional Law at King’s College London. And then, after all those academic achievements including being awarded an honorary fellowship by Oxford, she found herself drawn to something much simpler and much more personal: feeding people.

 

She began with supper clubs in her home in 2012. Those gradually grew into a pop-up in a Soho pub and eventually into Darjeeling Express, which opened in 2017. Today, the restaurant is in Rupert Street, but the heart of it still remains the same: homestyle Indian food, cooked with patience, memories and absolutely no desire to dilute it for anyone.

 

And then there is her kitchen.

An all-women kitchen, many of them South Asian women who had never received formal culinary training. Asma gave home-cooks a professional kitchen and, more importantly, a space where their skills were finally recognised. Some of the women who started with her have gone on to lead kitchens and supper clubs of their own.

There is something incredibly beautiful about that.

 

The food itself feels unapologetically homely. Asma has always been very clear about protecting the integrity of her recipes rather than changing them to suit every possible palate.

And her puchkas…

I mean it when I say, these may be the best I have ever had. I am not sure any pani puri or Golgappas I have eaten across North India can beat them. One bite and it was an instant ticket to heaven for a few seconds. The magic is in the Paani of the puchkas.

On the left is Kheema toastie(a crowd favourite), on top right is Asma's famous Momos  and then below is 'The Puchkas'

In the photo above : Badami Bhaingan (a must-have vegetarian dish if you like aubergine), Saag Paneer, and Kosha Mangsho (a must-have Bengali mutton dish). Asma hates the word “curry”: as she puts it, the British “needed to dumb it down to the lowest common denominator” by calling everything one thing, when Indian cuisine has individual names for its dishes. Better to watch the video than have me attempt to explain it!

I had specifically wanted to try the bhapa doi, but by the time we ordered, it was already finished. They suggested the khoobani ka meetha instead, made with whole apricots. It looked ridiculously simple, but the moment you mix it with the cream on the side… BOOM.

 

A complete explosion of flavour.

 

That, to me, is the magic of really good food. It doesn’t always need to look elaborate. Sometimes a simplest-looking dish can completely surprise you.

On the left is 'khoobani ka meetha' & on the right is 'gajar ka halwa' both served with cream

And the gajar ka halwa deserves its own mention. It is a labour of love, traditionally requiring hours of slow cooking and constant stirring, especially when prepared in large quantities. I have heard Asma mention in an interview that, in her restaurant they cook it fresh everyday and the whole process takes 8 hours of constant stirring.

 

You can definitely taste the patience, time, and affection that went into making this dish at Darjeeling Express.

 

The lassi looked plain and unassuming, but it absolutely blew our minds!

 

But perhaps what I loved most about Darjeeling Express is that the food is only one part of the story.

Asma is outspoken about the way women are treated in professional kitchens and about creating kitchens without the shouting, shaming and hierarchy that define traditional kitchen culture. She has also used food as a vehicle for social causes, from her early supper clubs supporting charity to her work advocating for food justice and women’s empowerment. I enjoyed watching her interview with Vir Sanghvi on Table 1 where she speaks about taking on industry giants like Gordon Ramsay, the glorification of toxic kitchen cultures, and the deeply lonely price of success. She breaks down exactly how kitchens are run, who gets heard, and who gets slapped. (Click Here to watch the full conversation)

In her conversation with Trevor Noah on 'What Now? with Trevor Noah' (Click Here to watch the full podcast) I loved how candid she was about fine dining and the whole obsession with Michelin recognition. She challenges the notion that Indian cuisine must be transformed into a Western fine-dining format to be considered worthy of recognition and also challenges the rituals of fine dining itself.

I laughed, I nodded, and I thought: Yes. That’s Asma.

 

Raw. Unfiltered. Bold. Completely herself.

 

And perhaps that is what I admire the most.

 

She built something successful without losing the reason she started it in the first place: the joy of feeding people, the food she grew up with, the women behind those recipes and the stories that live inside them.

Having long been a fan of Bengali cinema, literature, and music, I have now fallen in love with Bengali cuisine as well.

P.S. I Love you, Asma Khan