Asma Khan has changed the game - part 1
We have recently sat down with hospitality royalty Asma Khan. Asma is the founder and Chef of Darjeeling Express, London’s acclaimed Indian restaurant. Asma is legendary for various iconic reasons, from her infamous biryani to her all female kitchen - she is rewriting the rulebook for the industry. We hope you enjoy the following excerpts from our conversation.
Kelly’s Cause: ‘What do you think are the biggest barriers for women, and in particular mothers, working in the hospitality industry?’
AK: Well I mean the biggest problem is the way that the shift structure is set up. There is absolutely no justification, when lunch and dinner are two completely different events and also often the menu is different as well. Why people feel that there is a need to basically schedule staff to do a 16-hour double shift. You know it's not just mothers and not just women but even normal men who have one to two other things going on in their life struggle with that type of shift. Apart from that the staff will never see sunlight, especially in this country. If you are working a double shift, you go home so late at night and come in when it’s pretty dark now, especially since the time changed.
So it is all of that, plus the fact that there is very little sympathy or understanding or desire to change the shift pattern. In fact, guests in my restaurant appreciate the fact that they see my team leaving while they are still eating. They don’t stay. There is no need for everybody to stay. We give priority to people who have dependence. It can be mothers but it can also be elderly parents, it can be a very sulky cat. It doesn’t matter whom it is that you need to leave for. It could even be your very very adult husband who has a cold and it is a crisis and he is dying, if you need to leave early for that I will let you go. It is simply a discussion at the beginning of every shift. Every few months we have always had someone who’s pregnant and they know. They have seen what’s happened to other people who have been given easier shifts and time off for hospital appointments. We now have 4 Darjeeling Express babies, they come to the restaurant and they are so silent, they are familiar with all the sounds and the room puts them at ease. It is deeply emotional the first time they come back; they stare and know all of our voices. A friend of mine, who helps me a lot, spent a lot of her pregnancy at Darjeeling Express and when she now brings her child to the restaurant she sleeps straight away.
Kelly’s Cause: What aspects of learning how to cook with your family had a positive impact on your mental health?
AK: I think it helped enormously. It made me feel connected to my family. It’s hard to describe that time when I was in the country unable to see my family. Technology now is so different - 30 years you couldn’t just call - I had to write letters. In that time when I was cooking, in my food and the aromas I felt the presence of my mother next to me because that was what was familiar to me. Learning to cook together helped me to come to terms with this country, to feel less isolated and disconnected. You know before I moved to this country I slept in a room with all my siblings and cousins and also random relatives. I would wake up in the middle of the night and someone would have missed their train or someone random was sleeping next to me and I had no idea who it was. I grew up that way; I didn’t spend a minute alone. You didn’t even go to school alone, you went with everybody. So then suddenly to be alone was a real shock and I think I found coping mechanisms in cooking and feeding others. The sense of desperate loneliness and helplessness was eliminated completely by cooking and really helped me a lot.
