Asma Khan

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 2019 Business Insider named Khan number 1 on their list of "100 Coolest People in Food and Drink". In 2022 the World Food Programme named her a chef advocate and in 2024 Time named her one of the year's 100 most influential people.

Early life and education Khan was born in July 1969 and grew up in Calcutta. Her father is Rajput from western Uttar Pradesh. Her mother is from West Bengal and had a catering business in the 1970s and 1980s. Through her mother, Khan is also descended from Khan Bahadur Nawab Kazi Musharraf Hussain of Jalpaiguri, a Bengali lawyer, legislator, government minister, philanthropist and tea planter. According to Khan, her father and grandfather worked to unionize laborers in India. and a younger brother. Her family lamented the birth of a second daughter instead of the desired son. Khan attended La Martiniere in Calcutta.

Khan had an arranged marriage and immediately afterward moved with her husband to Cambridge in 1991. and missed the dishes she had grown up eating. She first started learning to cook from an aunt who lived in Cambridge. After her aunt died, Khan returned to India for a visit of a few months She told Francis Lam that learning to cook from her mother helped their relationship. Vivek Singh attended one and invited her to host a pop-up at his restaurant, The Cinnamon Club. she moved the supper clubs to a Soho pub, Sun and 13 Cantons, and started serving lunches instead. 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. 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. Most of the all-female kitchen staff at the restaurant are second daughters. Food & Wine called Darjeeling Express a "smash hit". Khan was profiled by the BBC in a short documentary. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a "stellar debut". It was shortlisted for the 2018 World Gourmand award for Best Indian Cookbook.

Khan was approached by Brian McGinn, producer of Chef's Table, to be the first British chef profiled on the series. The series' sixth season's theme is "the journey home". According to Bloomberg it became difficult to get a reservation at Darjeeling Express after the series aired.

Business Insider named her number 1 on their 2019 list of "100 Coolest People in Food and Drink". By the end of the year she had reopened in Covent Garden in a 120-seat space serving tasting menus. Darjeeling Express operated out of this location until March 2022. Following a 6-month popup in The Pembroke, Khan opened the doors to the latest location of Darjeeling Express in Kingly Court off Carnaby Street, Soho, a 96-seat space next door to her first, 2017 restaurant. Khan has also been outspoken about the importance of her presence and the restaurant's in the cultural and social landscape in Europe.

On 6 March 2025, Khan released her third cookbook Monsoon: Delicious Indian Recipes for Every Day and Season.

Philanthropy 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. 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.

Recognition In 2022, she was appointed the Chef Advocate for the United Kingdom (a WFP Goodwill Ambassador) by the UN World Food Programme and an Honorary Fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford. In 2024 she was named by Time to their list of the year's 100 most influential people. In 2024 she received the Johannes van Dam prize for her exceptional contribution to the sharing of knowledge of gastronomy.

Personal life Khan is married to Mushtaq, an academic. According to Khan, he is not a fan of her food, preferring simple dishes and finding hers too complex. The couple have two sons.