Asma Khan explains all-women kitchen as she critiques hospitality's treatment of female chefs

London — Renowned chef Asma Khan says her Darjeeling Express operates with an all-women kitchen not by design but through decades of trust and tradition, and she uses her platform to critique what she calls the hospitality industry’s poor reputation toward female chefs.

Nestled in London’s Soho, Khan’s Darjeeling Express has become a dining room that transports patrons to Calcutta by serving generations-old dishes cooked by women she befriended before she ever considered opening a restaurant. The restaurant, which sits in Carnaby Street’s Kingly Court, grew out of Khan’s supper clubs held at her home, where she recruited mothers and nannies she met on the school run to help in the kitchen. Eight years after its West End debut in 2017, the kitchen remains all-female, a fact Khan says has persisted even as the business expanded.

Khan has repeatedly stressed that there was no deliberate recruitment policy behind the exclusively female kitchen. “It was absolutely not a conscious decision. Because why would I do that if I wanted to run a business?” she told the Daily Mail. “When I was opening Darjeeling Express everyone told me I would fail. But these women loved being in my kitchen. How could I leave them behind?” She noted that the team has grown with the restaurant but there was never a need to advertise for positions; many of the current staff are daughters or daughters-in-law of the original group, whom she affectionately calls the “Spice Girls.”

Khan emphasizes that the ethos is built on learning from women who came before them, rather than rigid recipes. “There’s an unspoken conversation that happens when two people are cooking. Your mothers are really bad at giving instructions,” she joked, describing a kitchen culture in which taste and intuition are learned through generations of practice. Although she does not maintain a formal hiring policy toward women, she has long championed female cooks and has argued that “women have always been cooks, but never chefs.” This year she is helping to select the Women in Food Award winner at the Uber Eats Restaurant of the Year Awards, a role she says helps shine a light on women building careers in hospitality.

In a landscape where kitchens have faced public scrutiny over workplace culture, Khan argues that women encounter more obstacles than men in hospitality. She notes that the industry’s reputation for treating women poorly makes progress slow, and she opened Darjeeling Express at age 48 in part to emphasize that women can lead and thrive later in life. “Women, more than men, are asked to stay in their lane,” she said, adding that many women encounter additional hurdles from friends, family and “powerful men” who shape workplace norms. Khan’s comments come as wider industry conversations have highlighted bullying and toxic environments at several kitchens in recent years, including reports connected to a Michelin-starred restaurant in Edinburgh where a senior chef faced allegations and the business conducted an independent inquiry.

Khan argues that recognizing and funding female entrepreneurship in hospitality remains a hurdle, noting that funding has historically skewed toward STEM fields. She hopes the Women in Food Award, part of Uber Eats’ Restaurant of the Year Awards program, will help level the playing field by elevating the stories and achievements of women who run or work in restaurants. “I’m so thrilled I get to assess the women in this category for Uber Eats. It’s so important these stories are told,” she said.

Beyond recognition, Khan offers her kitchen as a venue for supper clubs hosted by up-and-coming women—a continuation of the original model that helped launch Darjeeling Express. She has stressed that established chefs in the UK have a duty to mentor women starting out in the industry to increase diversity in professional kitchens. While acknowledging that there is a long road ahead, she remains hopeful about the future. “There’s a mountain to climb to level the playing field in hospitality,” she said, and she expressed optimism for the years to come: “I’m optimistic about the future.”