Award-winning chef Asma Khan uses her success in London’s restaurant industry to empower other immigrant women, tackling both racism and sexism in the United Kingdom and around the world.
Her Darjeeling Express restaurant, famous and filled with celebrities, is closed most Sundays to be used as a free space for other female immigrant chefs to gain experience and host supper clubs.
When Khan first moved to Britain from India, she faced a lot of racism and harassment. Today, she uses her success to help other immigrant women overcome the challenges of discrimination.
“Immigrant food has been embraced, I want this country to embrace the immigrant too,” says Khan. “You cannot have my food and not have me.”
Khan puts her food expertise to use in many ways, including volunteering with the Action Against Hunger charity which helps hungry children, and spending her 50th birthday setting up a café in an Iraqi refugee camp to staff Yazidi women affected and traumatized by the Islamic State.
“The future for us to get doors opened – which are closed to women – is for us to actually fight together,” says Khan.
