Where Chefs Eat on Vacation: Asma Khan's Favorite Kolkata Spots
'If someone tapped me on my shoulder and asked me where home was, I'd say Kolkata,' Asma Khan tells me. The beloved London-based chef chef left the city in 1991—and at this point, has lived in the UK longer than in India—but the 'City of Joy' still has a hold on her. 'When I'm in Kolkata, I feel like I'm a teenager again," she says. Like most sprawling Indian cities, Kolkata carries the visual markers of rapid change, but Khan says there's plenty that remains: the old mansions; the trees; the markets where she's still recognized; the chaiwalas 'down the lane' still dishing out tea and snacks. 'When I walk through the city, I feel like the city remembers me, the dust remembers me," she says.
Khan grew up in India, but it wasn't until she moved to England in her twenties that she learned how to cook. After running supper clubs in her South Kensington home for a few years, Khan, who is a lawyer by education, opened her first restaurant in Soho in 2017. Darjeeling Express with its all-female staff and focus on home cooking quickly became one of London's hottest reservations, and Khan a celebrity chef—and full-throated advocate of undiluted Indian cooking.
Monsoon: Delicious Indian Recipes for Every Day and Season, Khan's latest (and third) cookbook, journeys through the breadth of that culinary landscape. From the narangi (orange) pulao served at her home on festive occasions in the winter to the matira (watermelon) curry that her father's Rajasthani family make to break the stifling heat of the summers, it tackles cooking by season, something that she still pushes for. Deeply personal childhood memories are foregrounded here as well, like those of gathering on still summer nights upon the terrace, when her Abba (father) would unspool his stories or make shadow puppets with his hands. Her penchant for storytelling, she says, comes from him.
Last year, when her family home was redeveloped into an apartment complex, Khan traveled to Kolkata to receive the keys to her very own apartment. 'I was the last granddaughter to walk down those old familiar stairs; my mother was born in that house,' she says of its significance. That visit was a sentimental return, a true homecoming. 'Although, in a way, it feels like I never really left,' she adds.
For more on her favorite home-cooked recipes, check out Khan 's cookbook, Monsoon. To walk down memory lane with her and bookmark the best of Kolkata's delicious fare, based on Khan's most recent visit, read on.
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