Get to Know Asma Khan, London Hotel Owner and Influential Figure in TIME’s List

The 2024 compilation of the world’s 100 most impactful individuals by Time Magazine has been unveiled, featuring Indians and individuals of Indian descent. Among them is the distinguished India-born British cook Asma Khan, recognized for her eatery Darjeeling Express in London’s Soho neighborhood.

Focusing on Bengali and Indian Rajput culinary arts, Ms Khan has achieved extensive acclaim for her cuisine and inventive method to cooking.

Who is Asma Khan?

1. Asma Khan hails from a regal lineage. The cook’s father is a Muslim Rajput, who descended from a warrior clan, and her mother is a Muslim Bengali.
2. In 2017, she recounted her childhood in a brief film created with the BBC. “A first-born girl is unhappy—a second girl is a catastrophe. I don’t believe there was much happiness at my birth, as I was a second daughter,” she stated. While her royal siblings and cousins were being prepared for arranged marriages, Ms Khan was challenging traditions by playing cricket on the streets of Kolkata and organizing impromptu games with kids from the slums.
3. Ms Khan tied the knot and relocated to London in 1991. She lacked cooking skills and was unable to even boil an egg. Eventually, she acquired cooking expertise in the UK and refined her culinary talents in her family’s kitchen during her visits to India.
4. She was the pioneer woman in her family to enroll in university. She attained a law degree and later finished a PhD in British Constitutional Law at King’s College, London.
5. Asma Khan’s eatery, Darjeeling Express, boasts an all-female kitchen. She made history as the initial British chef to be showcased on Netflix’s Chef’s Table, utilizing her platform to endorse racial equity and female representation in kitchens. She also appeared on Top Chef.