Article by Rob Kidd | Photography Provided by Darjeeling Express | Published October 12, 2024
For Asma Khan, the founder of Darjeeling Express, authenticity is more than a culinary buzzword. It’s an expression of her personal history and a deeper philosophy about what food can represent. In a London restaurant scene that often prizes novelty, Darjeeling Express stands apart, not because it offers something radically different, but because it remains steadfastly true to Khan’s roots—and to the women who cook alongside her.
Darjeeling Express is unlike most restaurants—a fact that Khan highlights with pride. “We are the only all-female Indian restaurant at this level in the world. There isn’t one in India,” she says. Her kitchen team is composed of home cooks—women who, like Khan, learned their craft not in culinary schools but in family kitchens. There is also no hierarchy: all the cooks do all the jobs. As a result, morale is high, and staff turnover is exceptionally low. Many have been with her since the very beginning (she lovingly refers to them as “the Original Spice Girls,”), and several have recruited their daughters-in-law to join the team.
Authenticity in Adaptation: How Darjeeling Express Balances Tradition and Sustainability
The story of Darjeeling Express begins with Khan’s decision to honor the culinary traditions she grew up with in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). But while many restaurants claim authenticity by replicating recipes with exacting precision, Khan takes a more fluid approach. Authenticity, for her, doesn’t mean importing ingredients from India to maintain some idealized version of a dish. “I try to source everything that’s British or from Europe so it is not crossing continents,” she explains. She refuses to use Indian onions, despite their more familiar flavor, because importing them would conflict with her approach to sustainability. Instead, she adapts, using techniques passed down from her grandmother to adjust to the characteristics of British onions, which have a higher water content. This balance—holding onto the essence of a dish while adapting to local ingredients—is a central part of Khan’s philosophy.
This pragmatism and adaptation are woven into the very nature of how food is prepared in India. “In my culture, you cook what is in the bazaar, you cook what is in abundance,” Khan says. Her menu at Darjeeling Express reflects this ethos, shifting with the seasons in England much as it would in India. Carrot halwa, a dessert made from carrots cooked with ghee and sugar, makes an appearance when carrots are in season. It’s a dish that might be unfamiliar to diners accustomed to the more common Indian restaurant staples, but it’s deeply rooted in Indian home cooking. It’s also delicious.
In the beginning, she recalls, some diners were puzzled. “Why don’t you have naan? Why is your dal yellow and not black?” she remembers being asked. Her response was always the same: this is the food she knows, the food that comes from her own experiences, and not from restaurant menus designed to appeal to Western palates. This emphasis on home cooking is key to understanding what sets Darjeeling Express apart. Khan is unapologetic about not catering to expectations shaped by years of British-Indian restaurant menus. “No one makes naan at home in India. It’s a restaurant thing that was created to make bread quickly, and it’s made by men,” she says. It’s not just the Brits who question the menu: “Every now and then you do find Indians and
South Asians coming and saying, ah, this is not the way my mother makes dal. And I tell them, but your mother is not cooking in my kitchen.”
The Women Who Bring Darjeeling Express to Life
Darjeeling Express is not just about Asma Khan’s personal history—it’s also about the stories of the women who cook with her. The women in her kitchen come from diverse backgrounds, and their personal histories shape the menu as much as Khan’s own. The momos, for instance, are a nod to her Nepali staff, whose dumpling-making skills bring a taste of the Himalayas to the restaurant’s vibrant menu. During the pandemic, the menu featured vada pav, a street food from Mumbai (formerly Bombay), because one of her cooks had made it for years in that city. “It’s deeply authentic to her,” Khan says of the dish, describing how ex-pat Mumbaikars would weep as they enjoyed a true taste of home.
What ties all these dishes together is not so much regional consistency but a shared commitment to honoring the traditions of home cooking. Khan’s menu is not an attempt to represent all of Indian cuisine—a task that would be impossible in any case, given the country’s vast culinary diversity. Instead, it’s a reflection of the personal, the familial, and the everyday. “We only know what we’ve learned from our mothers… We cook the food that we learned as children,” Khan explains. This deeply personal approach to food is a rejection of the standardized, often industrialized version of Indian cuisine that dominates many restaurant kitchens.
Khan sees her restaurant as part of a larger, more political movement. For her, cooking at Darjeeling Express is about giving visibility and respect to women who have historically been overlooked both in their homes and in professional kitchens. “The big difference is: we are honoring women who are never honored. So, this is why we’re so authentic,” she says. The food at Darjeeling Express, made by home cooks, stands in stark contrast to the culinary school-trained chefs—mainly men—who dominate restaurant kitchens both in India and abroad. Khan’s approach isn’t just a nostalgic nod to the past but a deliberate choice to elevate the kind of cooking that rarely gets celebrated in professional settings.
This personal authenticity has resonated. Darjeeling Express has flourished, not just because of the food, but because of the care that goes into every detail, from the dishes to the atmosphere in the kitchen. For Khan, success isn’t measured in Michelin stars or Instagram fame but in the loyalty of her customers, who return time and again for food that feels both comforting and surprising. “We don’t feed influencers. We do not feed any of these people to do TikTok videos,” Khan says. “I want you to come sit at my table. I want you to eat. And I want you to remember and then return”.
For Asma Khan, authenticity is not a fixed idea. It’s a dynamic, living thing, shaped by the people in her kitchen, the ingredients she uses, and the personal stories behind each dish. At Darjeeling Express, authenticity is not about conforming to anyone’s expectations—except her own.
