Darjeeling Express Chef Asma Khan Always Wanted to Be Powerful — and She Is

Tinfoil Swans Podcast

On this episode

Chef Asma Khan is a bolt of lightning to the senses. Born a second daughter, she felt dismissed by society, but Asma Khan has always known her worth. With her restaurant Darjeeling Express in London, she takes pride in her all-women staff cooking food they’d serve at home. Her contributions to the culinary world were recognized on the Time 100 list of people who are deeply influential in the world and she was featured in an episode of Chef’s Table. Khan spoke with Tinfoil Swans about how change happens in restaurants, using food to find your home — even if you have been displaced, and the power of ganging up with good souls. Plus, she got a surprise visit from a celebrity fan.

Note: This episode contains mentions of abuse. If you or someone you know needs help, please consult this list of resources.

Meet our guest

Asma Khan was born in Calcutta in 1969, moved to Cambridge in 1991, and earned her doctorate in British Constitutional Law at King’s College, London in 1996. Homesick for the food she’d grown up eating, Khan returned to India before starting school with the intention of learning to cook, and after graduation, gained a reputation for throwing dinner parties at her home. Those meals evolved into a supper club, then a Soho residency she called Darjeeling Express, and eventually a brick and mortar restaurant of the same name, where she and an all-women kitchen team have developed an international following for their homestyle regional Indian dishes. Khan was the first British chef to be featured in an episode of Chef’s Table and was named to the Time 100 list of influential people in 2024. Her bestselling cookbook, Ammu: Indian Home Cooking to Nourish Your Soul, was named as one of The Times‘ best food books of 2022, and Khan is currently at work on a documentary series called Tiffin Diaries.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is the executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine’s podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Highlights from the episode

On being the second daughter

“I realized that the extended family and friends kind of, almost pitied my parents because I was a second daughter, I was not the boy. And I realized that my parents really loved me, and my sister always made me feel invincible. I thought, I’m not going to allow these people to drown me. I’m not going to allow these arrows, the toxic words, comments about my weight, how dark-skinned I was, how wrong it was that I was playing outside cricket all day, definitely nobody would marry me — all these little comments, I thought, I’m going to take them all out of my heart, and I’m going to bury it. I’m not going to fight with anyone. I’m just going to become so unbelievably powerful that everyone is going to know my name.”

On defying labels

“I am so grateful that I am on that list of 100 most influential people — not women, people — in the world, for being a pioneer. That is a section I wanted to be in because I want people to know you can start a new story. You can be that person who nobody would imagine would succeed. I have school friends who came and told me, ‘We only thought you’d be trouble. Look at you.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, look at me.’ Don’t label people as troublemakers, as the rebel, the noisy kind who doesn’t conform and doesn’t fit in. We are the people who will succeed.”

On pulling others up

“Women need to be so powerful because we need to know how to network differently. Men network in pubs in this country, on golf courses, in football matches. Somehow, they managed to pull each other together and pull each other up. We need to be taught this because I don’t think we’re even doing it enough. Some women are. Every woman should be doing it. It doesn’t have to be that you’ve got to climb Mount Everest. You can just be compassionate to your sibling, your mother, your neighbor, your colleague. You can see a woman in your workplace who is eating separately from everybody, who seems like she’s not fitting in. It doesn’t take anything away from you if you are willing to step up and pull someone up.”

On the humility of service

“I have set up the restaurant to look like my home, but it’s a place where I want you to put your burden down when you enter. This is the great leveler. We see everyone as equal. We will serve you with a commitment, that I would serve someone in my own family. I think that the guest is an incarnation of God, that they come here on a long journey, and some have literally come on a long journey. We had people one day who came for biryani, who flew in from Texas just to eat and to leave after that. But even if you’ve just come from around the corner, I am grateful. You chose to come to my place to eat. I never take it for granted. And it is deeply humbling.”

On loyalty

“I began this journey as a collective of women. We began Darjeeling Express in my home, serving people around my dining table, serving people on the bone china that I got in my wedding and the silver that my grandmother gave me. We still feel that way. In this restaurant are the same women in the kitchen who began this journey with me in my house. There will come a time when this journey will have to end, but we will all get off together. The day one of them, who’s in my core team, tells me, ‘I want to leave,’ I will close because Darjeeling Express will never be the same if we are not that collective of women.”

On being the bird

“I am convinced that there are more good people than bad people, that there is more goodness in the world than evil. And I am so sure that in the end, our time will come and we will all be victorious. My father, who’s deeply Sufi in his tradition of Islamic thought, would always tell me, ‘When you are in a dark place, remember this, that the night is never endless. Dawn will come.’ And he said, ‘Asma, be that bird that you can hear singing before the light comes through. Go tell people the light is going to come. Be that person with the good news. Sit with that person until the light arrives, but be that bird.’ It’s very powerful when you are a very young child, and you’re sitting in the dark. My father took me to the roof of a palace and told me, ‘Sit and listen to it. Hear the birds.’ Such a powerful message, beautiful sound in darkness, and then you see the first ray of light.”

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

This season, you’ll hear from icons and innovators like Daniel Boulud, Rodney Scott, Asma Khan, Emeril and E.J. Lagasse, Claudia Fleming, Dave Beran and Will Poulter, Dan Giusti, Priya Krishna, Lee Anne Wong, Cody Rigsby, Kevin Gillespie and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what’s on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that’ll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.