The Female Run Immigrant Kitchen Making a Comeback Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic
Asma Khan had to close her restaurant, Darjeeling Express, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Initially when I closed, I left a light on with the hope that I would come back,” she said. “I wanted to make sure that, I never left the space in darkness so that I could easily find my way back in some emotional way.”
She’d spent years working to create a restaurant business staffed by home-taught female chefs that would celebrate the food of her native Kolkata and provide support to immigrant women and their extended families back home. The last thing she expected was for a deadly virus to bring all of her efforts to a shuddering halt.
“I needed to work with women who had learned to cook from their mothers and grandmothers,” she said. “It tended to be all immigrant women because they understood.”
It had been difficult to get a table at Darjeeling Express since it featured in a Chef’s Table documentary on Netflix last year, and each lunchtime, there were 95 guests in the 55-seater restaurant off Carnaby Street.
“It’s given me an opportunity to use my success and my moment in the spotlight to raise issues that other people are not raising, about equality, about diversity, about racism.”
But closing her doors hasn’t deterred her and her staff.
“When I said that we couldn’t come back here, everyone’s reaction was, “So, what are we doing next?” she said. “They understand that this is life. There are ups and downs, things change. We’ve got to move on.”
Asma’s next restaurant is going to also be called Darjeeling Express. It will be in Covent Garden and it’s going to have a deli celebrating the regionality of her kitchen staff. And it’s going to be food that people can take away. She will also have three tasting menus.
“The main thing that holds a lot of female entrepreneurs back is fear, fear of failure,” she said. “Go and step into areas that you were always excluded from. And when all the bits and pieces fly down and settle down, it’s going to be a very different environment. And you can take this chance to actually become something in this mess.”
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