Asma Khan interview: ‘I don’t want to be remembered as a celebrity chef, but as a disruptor’

Asma Kahn was half asleep, spent from an exciting and exhausting day at the restaurant, when she tweeted a photograph of Hollywood actors Paul Rudd and Dan Levy eating at her Soho restaurant, alongside the caption: “When Paul Rudd returns to your restaurant and brings Dan Levy with him!!!”

The chef, whose Indian restaurant, Darjeeling Express, took London by storm in 2015 following a rave review. Khan and her all-female team of home cooks had zero experience in the hospitality industry and all learned how to run a restaurant on the fly - something Khan seems especially adept at doing, considering how she didn’t know how to cook at all when she first moved to London from Calcutta 30 years ago.

“The next day, my phone melted,” she tells The Independent. “It’s not even the greatest picture, I’m masked because I was serving them and it was the only picture I had. But Asians everywhere were going crazy, and the idea that two big A-lister Hollywood guys were sitting and having a meal that so many could identify with as their culture, I think was quite incredible.”

The tweet went viral, garnering nearly 12,000 retweets and more than 189,000 likes. In October, Levy went on Jimmy Kimmel Live and the late-night talk show host asked him about the photograph and the food they ate. Khan says that between Rudd and Levy, they ordered six combinations of thali (a platter that can consist of 10 to 15 different dishes), as well as extra dessert.

Levy told Jimmy Kimmel: “That is Darjeeling Express and that is the great Asma Khan, and we had a tremendous meal in London.” The mention of Darjeeling Express on Jimmy Kimmel Live – which had an average of 1.78m viewers as of January 2021 – was huge for Khan and her staff.

“We were all screaming with excitement because it is a big deal,” she says. “Dan was very kind, he was on the show to talk about his book and everything he was doing, and to use that time to speak about our restaurant was very sweet of him.” A flurry of bookings following the clip meant the restaurant is now fully booked until the end of February 2022, and well into March.

But Rudd, who is a returning customer, and Levy aren’t the only high-profile celebrities who have turned up at Khan’s doorstep this year. Kumail Nanjiani, who stars in Marvel’s The Eternals, ate there while he was in London for the film’s premiere in October, as did former One Direction member, Liam Payne.

More recently, Bollywood giant Anil Kapoor ate at Darjeeling Express with his daughter, once again making waves online. One person commented on a picture she posted of the famed actor: “You have conquered both Hollywood and Bollywood.”

For Khan, though the excitement around her restaurants from a celebrity audience has been unexpected, she always knew she would go far. In February 2019, when she became the first British chef to be featured on the critically-acclaimed series Chef’s Table on Netflix, Khan recalls shouting her name to the mountains near Calcutta, where she grew up, and hearing it echoed back to her: “I knew, one day, everybody would know my name.”

Decades later, she is almost right. Khan’s name is ubiquitous with elevated Indian dining in London, and people travel from across the globe to dine at her restaurant, Darjeeling Express, which she opened in 2017. There is just one Darjeeling Express, and while it has moved from its original location in Soho to Covent Garden, it has become one of the culinary highlights of the capital.

It’s a far cry from her humble beginnings in the hospitality world. In 2012, Khan started by hosting private supper clubs in her home for a dozen people per session. But by 2015, her supper clubs had grown to 45 people per session and her family became unhappy, which led her to start a pop-up in a Soho pub, Sun and 13 Cantons, before she opened her own establishment.

Khan believes her appearance on Chef’s Table marked the turning point for her success After the episode aired, she saw a slew of celebrities coming to be fed by her and her team, including Keira Knightley, David Tennant, Lupita Nyong’o, and Antoni Porowski of Queer Eye, who told her he had watched the episode so many times, he knew the words by heart.

“The first time I met Antoni was at a studio in Los Angeles, and the way he greeted me was as if I was a long lost friend,” she says. “He said he felt that he knew me, and I think that explains a lot about why celebrities are drawn to the restaurant. People who work in the media and film world understand when someone is being scripted and when they are not, and it was quite clear that I was not being scripted.

“This was me talking about myself, but I was also the face of all these women who I am trying to represent. I am trying to represent the stories of the forgotten, the uncelebrated, the unloved. I think it hit home for a lot of people, who saw in the story something about themselves as well.”

Khan’s passion for representing underappreciated women stems from her being born the second daughter in her family despite her parent’s hopes she would be a boy. Indian culture largely places high value in boys because of the dowry families must pay when daughters are married; she says on Chef’s Table that girls are seen as “a burden”.

“I want to erase the moment they told [my mother] I was a girl,” she says. “I can’t wipe those tears, but what I can do is bring pride to my mother’s eyes, become this amazing thing, leave a mark so deep that no one cares I was a second daughter.”

It explains her all-female team, many of whom are also second daughters, as well as migrants like herself. Through her work, Khan has become a loud advocate for the contributions of women, ethnic minorities, and migrants in the restaurant industry - people she believes have been overlooked for far too long. Her story is their story: and it’s a story that she thinks other people want to be a part of.

Khan’s history, and that of her team, is perhaps most perfectly encapsulated in her famous biryani. It is her most sought-after dish, served only at her weekly supper clubs that sell out within hours of slots opening. Biryani is a complex dish with migration in its roots, and is enjoyed by people at all levels of society - as a street food and as a luxurious, celebratory dish.

Khan explains the process of making her biryani, which involves layering cuts of lamb, whole potatoes, rice spiced with saffron, garam masala, turmeric and other spices into a pot so large, a child could play hide and seek in it. The lid is put on and it is sealed with an inedible dough and left to cook - what happens to it is left to “faith”, she says.

When the time comes to unseal the pot and reveal its contents, everyone in the restaurant holds their breath. She opens the pot, performing the grand reveal, and the steam rises along with the heady aroma of spices and meat. On Chef’s Table, she describes it as the smell of “the history of the spice trade”.

“I want people to be able to see themselves in the story that this restaurant symbolises – which is about women, Asians, immigrants, all of that. The fact that celebrities have come and are equally moved is a great leveller,” she adds.

“You enter this space and you are all at the same level, everyone comes to share food and stories, and enjoy themselves.”

What does she make of her own celebrity status? Khan pulls a face at being described as a celebrity, but says that it was “a long time coming”. “I feel very humbled. Too many women have gone to their graves thinking they were unskilled. In Asian culture, this whole idea of service and food, taking care of men and the family; women are the feeders of generations and we are still uncelebrated,” she says.

“Women have taken on this role effortlessly, but just because we make it look effortless does not mean it is effortless. The celebrity status for me is less important. I am very grateful that through my face and my voice, I can amplify the stories of women who are here now and who are no longer here. I want to amplify their stories because we are the custodians of recipes, we are the healers and the feeders, and yet, are never ever rewarded financially.”

Khan describes her fame as being on a stage, with a spotlight on her. But when she looks down, she sees “rows of women in the darkness who will not get their chance to be on stage. This is my dream: I want to make the stage bigger. I want to clear the pathways for women of all cultures, for those who have been marginalised, so that they can eventually speak for themselves and I can watch them from the wings,” she says.

“I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history. I don’t want to be remembered as a ‘celebrity chef’, but as a disruptor – a warrior, because I fought for those who, at the time, didn’t have the strength. This is what my legacy will be.”

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