Join us for this live event hosted by Asma Khan, Chef and Owner of Darjeeling Express.
The talk will look at how the onus and responsibility for clearing the pathways for future female leaders is with those who are currently in the limelight. It is not just their moment to be on center stage and occupy space – their role is to remove hurdles that they may have hit along the way.
Asma Khan moved to Cambridge from Calcutta in 1991. Now residing in London with her husband and two boys, she comes from a royal background – Rajput on her father’s side and Bengali on her mother’s. After studying law, Asma went on to do a PhD in British Constitutional Law at King's College London.
Cooking was always her passion and she began her food career in 2012 as a supper club in her home. In 2015, she opened a pop-up in a Soho pub to much acclaim, and Darjeeling Express the restaurant opened its doors in June 2017. A year later, her debut cookbook “Asma’s Indian Kitchen” was published by Pavilion. The book was the winner in the U.K. category for food publishing in Indian cuisine in the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.
Asma is the first British chef to feature in Netflix's Emmy nominated Chef's Table. Her episode also received a 2020 James Beard Award nomination.
Business Insider named her number 1 on their list of "100 Coolest People in Food and Drink". She has been included in the 2020 and 2021 editions of the GG2 Power List –profiling Britain’s 101 most influential Asians and she is now the first chef to be featured on Vogue's list of 25 most influential women of the year.
In 2021 Asma was shortlisted by GQ Food & Drink Awards in the Veuve Clicquot Innovator category for Darjeeling Express and shortlisted in the Restaurateur of the Year category by the National Restaurant Awards. Her second cookbook ‘Ammu’ is coming March 2022.
