Asma Khan

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]

Interior of original Darjeeling Express

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]

Khan, about to open a dum biryani

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 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]

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][28] 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][29]

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] She is Muslim.[3][11]