The flavour of home

Sonoo Singh  

“When I first moved to England as a young girl and stepped out of my new home on a cold winter day and looked around the trees stripped bare of leaves, I thought to myself that is exactly how I feel. Stripped bare and cold… I thought I had made a huge mistake to leave everything that was warm and comforting. Twenty-eight years down the line, I have created a home for others …Darjeeling Express; and not just people from Southeast Asia but Europeans, Africans, and feel they are at home.”

This was Asma Khan, the founder chef of London-based restaurant Darjeeling Express and also the first British chef to appear on the award-winning Netflix series, Chef’s Table, talking to me on my podcast. She made me realise how food sometimes helps us identify that in-between space a lot of us find ourselves in, almost helping us belong to more than one world, one place.

I often find myself in search of familiar smells and taste. Without doubt, London has some of the most exquisite restaurants in the world, including those offering excellent Indian food and I have tried most of these. I will always remember when my best friend, Caroline, took me to Darjeeling Express when it first opened last year. The restaurant is just off the famous Carnaby Street in London, always festooned with excited tourists. I walked up two floors to enter this intimate room to find the smells and sound (she was playing Asha Bonsle!) that I was always searching for.

From prawn malaikari to shikampuri kebab to the slow-cooked Bengali goat curry and stewed hunza apricots with cream — there is very little here that resembles my mum’s cooking. Yet, there is Asma and her broad smile, greeting every single guest and making you feel at home. Because where else is home if not where you’re forced more food on your plate? Yes, she always does that! She smells like home too; there are always hugs at the end. I have to confess that her pooris are definitely like Ma’s. In fact, every time my son wants to eat nani’s pooris, we head to Darjeeling Express!

Last year, I invited Asma to tell her story on my podcast. A student of Laws at King’s College in London, she registered Darjeeling Express the day she got her PhD in British Constitutional Law. Darjeeling Express started as a dinner for 12 guests at home, serving Indian food cooked from family recipes that go back generations, in homage to her Mughal ancestry. Born into a royal family in Aligarh, Asma also cooks food from Calcutta, the city where she was born and brought up. An all-women team of housewives runs the kitchen. And a percentage of Darjeeling Express’ proceeds go to the Second Daughter Charity, which aims to empower second-born daughters in India by sending celebration care packages on their birth and funding their education.

Ever since the Netflix documentary charted her journey, she has become quite the superstar. There are queues outside the restaurant. But, to me, she will be the one to remind me about my heritage and culture and how food is always for sharing, and perhaps the only way to celebrate our differences. And always, yes always, she reminds me of home.