Join us as we board the Darjeeling Express with Asma Khan to chart her journey from maligned second daughter of a Rajput royal family who couldn’t cook, to celebrated feeder of Hollywood A-listers in London’s Soho. Along the way – in addition to sampling some of the restaurant’s signature dishes – we contemplate the importance of storytelling to good food; why cooks from South Asia are more attuned to the spiritual aspects of feeding; and the significance of running an all women kitchen.
** 00:50-01:10: A reminder to sign-up to our newsletter Listen To The Migration Menu Podcast – The Migration Menu, and get some great discount offers from eateries featured on the show!
**Starters** (01:10 – 04:55)
James and Luke discuss why the Darjeeling Express is a restaurant with a difference: not only does it run a women-only, all South Asian diaspora kitchen, but none of the women who work there with Asma are formally trained chefs. Asma herself is also a different kind of restaurant patron: unlike the men who dominate the industry, most of whom are trained in what she describes as “stainless steel empires”, she has a PhD in constitutional law, and learned to cook from Bengali aunts who were afraid that if they didn’t share their secret recipes, she’d leave her husband. Since then, she’s been listed in Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and has been a cheerleader for food justice.
**04.55-05.14: A shout-out from Mike Crawley, co-host of The Anthropology Podcast, to have a listen to one of our sibling shows!
**Mains** (08:24-20:23)
James and Luke join Asma for masala chai between services at her Soho-based restaurant, where she recounts her story from a childhood spent in Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata – the second daughter of a Rajput royal family – to Cambridge and then London in the UK. Food was always an important part of the tale: her mother set up her own catering business, and her father regaled them with stories he made-up about the origins of different dishes. It was, however, her struggles for recognition in the wider extended family – where girls always ate last and ate least – that really informed her approach to business. Starting off with a supper club, run from her own home, the restaurant, she explains, is not just a business – even though it’s Michelin guide listed – but “a battle cry for justice.”
**Dessert** (27:49-37:09)
James and Luke draw out the key takeaways from their interview. Gender politics, of course, was a major theme, leading them to reflect on why women in catering seem so much more likely to take less conventional approaches – from running supper clubs and tiffin services to restaurants with a political message – than their male counterparts. But so, too, was the importance of storytelling, and the power of Asma’s rhetoric to get across a narrative that challenges sexism as well as racism within the industry and beyond. The binary split between the sacred and the profane, so common in Western discourses, has been challenged through many of the interviews for The Migration Menu, and this was no exception: Asma, in common with many South Asian diaspora restaurateurs, and particularly the women, makes no radical distinction between the spiritual and the everyday aspects of food and cooking.
**On the Menu**
Puchkas (wheat shells filled with spiced chickpeas, potatoes and tamarind water)
Channa chaat (chickpeas, fresh herbs, spices, tamarind, yogurt)
Badami Baingan (aubergine with coconut, peanut and tamarind)
Prawn Malaikari (traditional Bengali dish with a coconut milk base)
Tamarind dal
Pulao rice
Paratha
Khoobani Ka Meetha (a pudding of slow-cooked apricots served with cream and finished with pistachios
Masala chai
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