Asma Khan Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. Coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe Magazine.
I have to ask, how is everybody doing? Are you hanging in there? We will either have a lot to celebrate or a lot to talk about after tomorrow. If you are feeling a little on edge, today's episode is exactly what you need. All right, let's talk about today. The team at Hello Sunshine, Reese Witherspoon's media company dedicated to changing the narrative for women asked me if I would interview Chef Asma Khan at their Shine Away Conference in Los Angeles, held in early October. I said, yes, of course, and I am so glad I did. Asma, it turns out, is a force of nature. She's the chef and owner of Darjeeling Express, the London restaurant with an all-female kitchen. Asma didn't set out to be a chef. In fact, she didn't even know how to cook when she got married. She told me she couldn't even boil an egg. Today, there's a “Chef's Table” episode about her on Netflix. She was on this year's Time 100 list and she also has a new cookbook, her third out this march titled “Monsoon: Delicious Indian Recipes for Every Day and Season.” Asma is so amazing. She got a standing ovation at Shine Away. By the way, the Shine Away Conference was presented by the good folks at AT&T. I had such a good time at Shine Away, I bumped into lots of you. Thanks for saying hi. I saw friends like Ellen Bennett, Samah Dada, and The Pasta Queen. I bought books from Reese's book club authors and even met Reese herself. She and her team put together a very inspiring weekend, so congrats to them. Stay tuned for my Shine Away interview with Chef Asma Khan.
Some housekeeping. The next issue of Cherry Bombe will be out later this month and you won't believe who's on the cover. Keep an eye on our Instagram @CherryBombe for the cover reveal. But if you're impatient, hear are two hints. You love her and she was on a recent episode of our podcast, did you guess? I bet you did. Anyway, you can subscribe and get four issues a year of our gorgeous print magazine delivered right to your door, plus free shipping. Head to cherrybombe.com to get a subscription for yourself or a gift subscription for a friend. The deadline to subscribe and receive our holiday issue is Friday, November 15th.
Now let's check in with Asma Khan. I'm so honored to be sitting next to Chef Restaurateur, cookbook author and advocate, Asma Khan.
Asma Khan:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Asma's Michelin-listed Darjeeling Express restaurant in London is known for Its all-female kitchen. How amazing is that? Asma has many accolades including her on the Time 100 most influential person list in 2024, and an episode of the acclaimed Netflix series, “Chef's Table.” And I hope you've all seen her episode. If you haven't, you can watch it tonight. Okay, Asma, I have a question for everyone. We're going to start with all of you. How many of you in the room are the second daughters in your family? Raise your hands. Okay. Unless you have an annoying older sister, you probably haven't given your second sister's status much thought. But for Asma, who was born a second daughter in Calcutta, she was considered a burden and told that her mother cried when she was born. Asma, I'm curious, how did that shape you at such an early age?
Asma Khan:
I think it was deeply scarring. With everything that's happened and all the success, it's not that the scar ever heals or fades, just feel it less. My mother did cry when I was born. She's one of five daughters. I think my grandmother and everybody just, she felt overwhelmed. She felt that she'd failed them by delivering another daughter. And of course people in many cultures are like, "Oh, you're just going to be like a mother. You're going to have five daughters." And it was tough for her. But after the initial disappointment, my mother loved me so much, but the game-changer was that my sister loved me so much. That love from two women who believed in me transformed everything but the extended family would constantly remind me about the fact that I was inadequate. I was constantly told that I was fat and dark and ugly and I think that maybe being a second daughter, but being attractive in the norms of what was considered beautiful in my family may have been easier.
I just love playing cricket on the street. I think I was trying to be a tomboy to kind of be the boy that my mother didn't have. So that also complicated things. So yes, it did have an impact on me, but I am what I am because I was put through fire and I feel I came out glistening like gold, and it is not easy. I think that it's not just my culture, it's then a lot of agrarian cultures because the boy is the one who inherits the farm, the family house. And there is always this sense that the family is not complete unless you have a son. It is difficult when the second girl is born because it feels like, "Oh my God, there's not going to be a boy in the family. Who's going to carry the family name?"
These are difficult things that families need to speak about because I came out of this okay, but a lot of girls internalize this kind of othering and then they are in difficult marriages or getting bullied at work or at workplace and they always take a lot of grief as if this is what was role in life. Your role in life is not to carry burden of ignorance of other people. You are not born to crawl through life. But the thing is that society does this to women, whether it's because of the way you look or where you came in the pecking order in a family, you are made to feel inadequate.
And the sad thing is that so many women's dreams are crushed by what starts off in your own family. That's what they're doing to young girls and this labeling of girls, oh, you're the smart one. You are the sporty one, you're the beautiful one. You feel that this is my lane and I have to stay on this lane because I'm the smart one. I'm the pretty one. It's damaging not just for the ones who are considered to be not attractive physically, it's also damaging for the pretty one because she always has to role play being pretty her whole life as if she's not smart or she's not able to make decisions.
Kerry Diamond:
We're going to fast-forward a bit. You had an arranged marriage and you and your husband, an academic, moved to Cambridge. You study law and become the first woman in your family to have a PhD. But, there is a but, you are lonely, unhappy and unfulfilled. What was going on?
Asma Khan:
I missed home. I missed food. For anyone who's above a certain age, this was a time where there was no internet, there was no mobile phone, you couldn't contact home. My father wrote to me. So when I moved to Cambridge 33 years ago, it was extremely lonely. It felt like a bereavement. The sense of loss, I think none of us can understand. And I tell people, you can Skype your dog in Delhi now. It's not even an issue and communication is incredible. But at that time when telephones didn't always work, I struggled and I always kept an unopened letter of my father because I wanted to know that I could read his words when things got tough, and that was the kind of isolation I felt. And then I was overwhelmed because I couldn't change everything around me. Couldn't change the weather, for one, it was awful.
I'd come from Calcutta where it's hot and humid and Cambridge was just like... And I felt because in the Torah and the Quran, everywhere, talk about hell being fire. My God, no, hell is Cambridge in winter. It's freezing and the wind would cut through knife and you think, "What is this?" I see all the birds flying. I was thinking, you guys are smart. You're getting out of here. I can't even fly away. I was stuck in this place and this grieving and absolute loneliness. And my husband was very nice, but I just got married to him and he was a terrible cook and he would cook for me, leave this awful food. But I was scared to criticize because I didn't know how to cook myself. And I thought if I tell him anything and he stops cooking, then I bloody starve. In that grieving and emptiness and hollowness, I figured that cooking and food was my way home. I went back and I learned how to cook for that reason because I knew that this was one thing I could learn and maybe it would change my life.
Kerry Diamond:
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Thank you to everyone who joined us at last weekend's Jubilee Wine Country celebration at the Solage Resort in Calistoga, California. It was a beautiful Napa Valley weekend and I was thrilled to meet so many of you and make lots of new friends. Keep an eye on our Instagram and cherrybombe.com for highlights. Also, we'll be sharing some of the recordings of the talks and panels in the near future. If you'd like to join us for our next Jubilee, it's taking place in Manhattan on Saturday, April 12th. It's going to be an amazing day of connection and community and great food and drink. It's also going to be our biggest Jubilee yet. Early bird tickets are on sale right now at cherrybombe.com. We'd love to see you in New York City.
You are a renowned chef today, so people might think you're exaggerating slightly, but Asma didn't even know how to boil an egg. That's the situation. So you go home to Calcutta for the summer, tell us what happens.
Asma Khan:
I went back and I tried to communicate. For all of you who have Asian heritage, you understand that Asian mothers listen to you half and the other half is what they think you said. So I went back and I told them, "I'm lonely and I'm struggling. I need to learn how to cook." She wasn't switched on. The moment I said, "I will not go back," that worked because she was like, "Ah, the shame that she's going to walk away from the marriage." And she said, "Oh, no one's going to believe that you came back because you're hungry." I said, "I will not go back because I'm hungry and I'm really missing home."
So she said, "Fine." And she taught me how to cook and managed to scare all my aunts as well who shared all their recipes. They don't share within each other because every aunt wants to keep the recipe. I told them, I'm going to bring so much shame to the family because I'm going to come back and I'll tell everybody it's because I was hungry. No one's going to believe that and no one's going to get married to your daughters, because South Asian culture is traditional. There would be so much gossip. I didn't care. I just got all the recipes of everybody. I learned how to cook. I actually was impressed by myself because I learned to cook superfast and for everyone over here who thinks they don't know how to cook, you do.
If you love food and you spend a little bit of time with your mom or your grandmom's kitchen, it's just learning through the sound of the mustard seed popping, the curry leaves frying, when the onions are caramelized and getting brown. That beautiful aroma, the sizzle of the spice. I just had memories of all of that and conversations of my mother saying, "Oh, this is not right," or whatever it is. So once I watched, because mothers are really bad at giving recipes, it's so random, I just thought, "I'm not going to ask her. I'm just going to watch," because at least what I'm watching, I can see all the bits that she doesn't tell me. I learned to cook. And when I went back, I mean my husband was like, "This is a new bride I've got." I came back and started cooking.
But what was so beautiful, I realized when I went back, in the aromas of the spices and the food I was cooking, I felt the presence of my mother next to me, I felt finally fulfilled. The hollowness I had of being away from family and being uprooted, you can see it's 33 years, I still get emotional because I'm not afraid to speak about loneliness because people look at you and they think, "Oh, you're famous and you're okay." But behind that, there have been so many hurdles on which so many of us fall and get bruised. And the fact that I couldn't cook became something so important for me. And once I learned to cook, it was just a different world.
Kerry Diamond:
So you returned to Cambridge, you still have to deal with the weather, but you come back to Cambridge with a sense of purpose. You start to notice women in your neighborhood and I'm curious, why hadn't you seen them before and how did you all start to connect?
Asma Khan:
Well, that's when I moved from Cambridge to London. It was the nannies in the school where my children went. They were living nannies, mainly looking after European families. I'd never seen them before, but I realized one thing, that food was my way home. It is what completed this empty soul for me that I could cook, I could eat the food of my family, and I knew none of these women were cooking their food where they were working. But suddenly, I realized then that I need to put my arm around these women. I need to bring them to my house. I need to feed them. I need to the person who I never met, who wasn't there for me.
And I wanted to use food as a language of love, to reach out to those who left their home, left their homeland, left their families and had come to a foreign land which was bloody cold and who were trying to make a life for their families. And I thought that I don't have a lot, but I have this one gift, I can cook, and I can cook food that tastes just like home. So let me cook with them. And that's how the friendship started and that's how I made friends with the nannies that were in the school where my kids went to.
Kerry Diamond:
So this leads to your famous supper clubs in which you invited dozens of strangers at a time into your house to cook for them. Were you doing this for your guests or were you doing this for yourself?
Asma Khan:
Wow. No one's asked me that question before. I was doing it for myself. I was doing it for myself because it's the scars of feeling unwanted. I think I wanted to be useful. I think I wanted to be of service. No one's asked me this before, but yes, it was for myself.
Kerry Diamond:
And all the strangers in the house, how'd that work out?
Asma Khan:
The strangers worked out very well because the person who would've been very upset with strangers in the house was my husband, and I lied. He didn't know about them because I did it behind his back. So it was fine because what he doesn't know, he doesn't know. He's an academic. So I know he uses social media a bit now, more likely I would've been caught now. But at that time, he was so clueless and he is an academic, he does his own thing. He didn't follow anything. So there was no way on earth. And I told everybody who came to my house, "If you ever meet my husband, never ever tell them you came to my house." So that was it. And everybody was like, they understood this. So one day, by mistake, somebody rang the bell, everyone panicking saying, "Your husband's back." I said, "No, he's in South Africa." And I went... So they all knew this is like something really we all need to keep a secret. I love people. So they helped me cheat on my husband and they feasted in the house. It was great.
Kerry Diamond:
I didn't think about how the lack of social media was kind of the secret to your success back then.
Asma Khan:
Yes, yes. Now, you can't. Now, some idiot's going to post something and then someone's going to tell my husband, "Oh, that looks like your house. Is that your wife?"
Kerry Diamond:
So the supper clubs lead to some pop-up restaurants in London. And finally, your own restaurant, Darjeeling Express with its famous all-women kitchen. One of the biggest deterrents for women opening their own restaurants and food businesses, I'm sure everyone in this room knows this, is access to capital. How did you raise the money to open a restaurant?
Asma Khan:
Oh my God, for my whole life, I always thought, "Oh, money is such a dirty thing. I don't want it." And when you want it, no one wants to give it to you. And it was so hard. My life has changed because I met a random person in a supper club. I had gone to someone else's supper club and she had her hair dyed pink and these Hello Kitty bags. She was a New Yorker. She was very loud and she was of Chinese origin. And I was telling her, "Oh, I want to open a restaurant, but I don't know how to get money." She says, "Go to a bank." She says, "Do not undervalue yourself. Do not go in and get money from a business partner because if you become successful and you will become successful, then they owe your shares and they own you."
And I was like, "Anyone give me money, I don't mind giving them shares. I'm nothing." But she told me, "Come to the bank and I'll help you." She taught me how to do a business plan. So initially, I got some money from the bank, but the bank would only give me the money if I put in equal amounts of money. So I went to someone who was an investor. The night before they were supposed to give me the money, they decided that they wanted to control everything. They wanted 51% of my company, my hollow company, small company, which had nothing. But somehow, I felt disrespected. I felt that you can't do this. We had agreed to something, you turned around, and I felt dismissed. The scars were throbbing inside me because I know this feeling so well, but I know one thing, cannot allow anyone to crush you.
And I thought this is thing. So I said, "No, I don't want your money," and I hung up, and I was weeping sitting on the floor. My husband, who by which time had known about the supper clubs because I had to... So he knew the whole story by then was not impressed. And he was very against the idea because by which time, I had done my PhD, I'm an academic, he's an academic, he's a professor. And he felt that you want to help women, stay with the law, do something... Which he was right about. Who would think that you could open a restaurant, go into food and help women, help empower women? No one had done that. So he was right on that, and I was thinking... So I sat on the floor crying all evening. He walked past, said, "I have actually broken the children's trust fund, my entire life savings, I'm transferring 185,000 pounds to you. Take it, go fly." He said, "You deserve this. Go."
And so the most unlikely hero of all, the person who I lied to, but I have to say I didn't feel one iota of shame. I was like, "Give me the money." Very good. But I did feel something. I washed all his clothes that night, because I was thinking, let me be this domestic goddess now, because now I've got all this money, it's fine. And I'm very ashamed because I haven't returned the money to him. To his credit, never asked me for his money back. At some point, when I become rich and famous, I'm going to give him the money back. So I keep telling him I'm not rich and famous as yet. The bottom line is that it's hard being in hospitality. But yeah, he's nice because he didn't ask me his money back. And that's how I financed it. But it was incredibly difficult because before I actually thought of the restaurant, I wanted to open a tea shop and I went to my bank.
I went to three men in suits and I told them, "I want 10,000 pounds, not a lot, and I want to open a tea shop." And they told me, "Oh, Mrs. Khan, what a lovely hobby. Call us to your house for tea." I cried all the way home and I swore then to God, I will be that name every woman can take even when I'm dead. In my 40s, I was made to feel dismissed. I was laughed at, I was ridiculed. I felt stripped of all things beautiful. It was so raw. It reminded me of my first feeling when I saw trees without leaves in Cambridge. And I ran my hands down the bark and it was raw and rough. And the fact that three men had reduced me to that, to feeling so exposed and unprotected is totally what I can think of right now.
It was tough and that I could actually get the money to open a restaurant was huge. And I had someone like Vincey who was a financial person who guided me, who believed in me, who taught me simple things like how to do a spreadsheet. I didn't know anything. I did a PhD, but I didn't need to do all of this. It's law PhD, you don't have to do a spreadsheet. So I don't know how to do it. And so I don't know how to do a lot of basic things, and she taught me. And this is the great thing. Creative people need... The backbone has to be someone who's good in finance. You will not succeed otherwise without it.
Kerry Diamond:
So one of your non-negotiables when it came to opening your restaurant was an open kitchen. I think all of you probably know what that concept means, but it's where you can see right into the heart of a restaurant and see and hear everything that's going on. But why did you want this?
Asma Khan:
It was very important that people see the hands that labor, because behind the walls of these kitchens that are in the names of some poncy chef, you don't know who's behind those walls. The nannies from the school that were doing the supper club were now the chefs in my kitchen, and I was so proud of them. Some of them came from backgrounds without education, had been through terrible abuse. This was their honor. They were wearing this chef's coat and I wanted them to see the people who were eating, but I wanted them to see these women because everybody in South Asia wants a roti if it's free. Every home from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, it is a woman cooking. But where there is money, it's always men. This is because we've always made it look effortless. They think it's valueless. I am the only, at this level, the only all-female Indian kitchen in the world.
I had to show their faces. I wanted people to see. You can talk about this. And I'm grateful, so grateful to everyone, to Reese and Hello Sunshine for this platform. All of you who feel excluded from spaces, go in there and... There is this saying that you cannot be what you cannot see. You become what everybody else can see, become that person who you could not see in your dark days. That's what I tried and I understood that it was always going to be a collective of women. I needed to celebrate the Shakti, the energy, the female energy that is there at the heart of my business. And for that, everybody needed to see who was all-powerful, not me, the women who were cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
And Asma, you've had almost no turnover, correct?
Asma Khan:
Yes. Yes. I mean, the kitchen is still the same. I call them the original Spice Girls, the ones who started with me. We've had to expand a bit because we've become bigger. But they're all there. They're all the same. And they are very authoritative. They are incredible and they have the most beautiful voices because they sing. And when things get tough, I realized they all sing the same song because there's the same time when you take your breath in for the high notes, then everybody's breathing the same way and you see 10 checks and you can see it's getting 20 minutes, and 25 minutes and you know that, oh my God, these women aren't afraid. They will smile. They will wave at the customers because everyone, the instinct is, "Oh my God, let's hide our faces because they're going to say, 'Where's our food?'" They were not that. They would sing and they would start clapping.
And this rhythm from the work surface, everyone was on fire. And I love that. And this is so powerful. The guests can see them smiling and singing and they know that you've got to be patient. I mean, we become consumers of food. You go into a restaurant and food is out in five minutes and it's all about a 12-inch plate with half an inch of food and drizzles of things and a puff and a puff and one edible flower. And you think, "Should I eat the flower because I'm hungry? Because this little thing just kind of disappeared." Our food is not that, and I don't even try to garnish our food. And my attitude is I am brown, my food is brown, it is beautiful, and I don't need to camouflage it with other colors because for me, this is me honoring the women in their graves.
Those that went without actually being appreciated for their food. Everyone ate food from the table and left. One reason why the women were in the kitchen, women ate last in so many cultures. They serve the men. And this still is happening today. The men eat first, the women eat next. So they didn't even see the men appreciating their food. This still happens today. It's unacceptable. But patriarchy runs in our food. Who is making that roti one at a time? There's someone in the kitchen making that and that we serve the choicest cuts of meat or the best part of any dish to the male head of the family. I think sometimes, you got to think that this is problematic. This is problematic because we should honor the matriarch as well, not us and them, matriarch and the patriarch both, equally important.
Kerry Diamond:
Asma, I'm going to put you on the spot for a second. You did sing on the Netflix episode. Would you sing a line or two for us?
Asma Khan:
Oh, no, no. I'm not going to sing. I don't want to lose this audience. I'm not going to sing. I didn't even realize because I didn't know where to cut. I was like, "Oh my God". Because if anyone has done any food shows like this, they're in your face the whole time. You cannot ignore them. And at some point, one of my little tiny little women rushed me, almost pushed one of these guys 6'6", wearing the kind of body camera. She told him, "I will cook you if you don't move." I was like, "Oh my God." Because this small kitchen, this super small kitchen, there were eight people inside your kitchen. So the fact that they caught me singing, I mean I'm not surprised. It was crazy. Luckily, they didn't put the bit where my mother was shouting at me with all the cameras on me, everything, my mother was lecturing me on about why I put the wet towel on the bed.
I was telling her, "Shh, they're recording, they're recording." She says, "Let them also know how incompetent you are." And I was like, "Why?" I was thinking they got to film this. So I told them, "Do not use this scene at all." For those who've seen my episode, you'll see my sister and me arguing over makeup because she's trying to dress me up. My sister always tries to dress me up. I didn't even know they were filming. I wouldn't have argued so much. I would've been this kind of more docile sweet girl. See, the problem is when someone's on your head for like 24 hours, you can't fake it. So yeah, what you see in Netflix is what I am, and no, I will not sing. Sorry.
Kerry Diamond:
I tried. Okay, we can't have Asma Khan here and not talk about food a little bit. I would love to know what dish are you known for?
Asma Khan:
It's the biryani. It's a wonderful dish from Central Asia all the way through the Middle East and beyond. There's always been a rice and meat dish which you cook to serve the clan. I love the biryani, not for the fact that it is hard to make, it is bloody hard to make, but the fact that it's a great leveler. Everybody eats from that same one pot. Everyone is served together. It's the great equalizer. And I know that everybody looks at biryani and thinks, "Oh, this is a complicated dish. It's a regal dish. It's a royal dish." For me, this is a dish of about equality. It's a difficult dish to make. As you cut through the rice and the aromas of the saffron that comes through, there is that moment where the fragrance of the spices fills a room and you feel that you've actually embraced everybody first with the aroma.
You've got to eat with every sense. So then that aroma comes through, and then visually, you see this thing, then you taste it. That's why I love biryani because it feeds every part of your soul, and it's a dish that you just have to work instinctively because you can't check it. Once you put it all in and you seal it and you put it on slow cook, the next time you see it as you open it. And that can be very intimidating, but that's when the faith kicks in. You've got to believe, you've got to understand this...
Spirituality and food are important. They are linked. They've always been linked traditionally in every religion as well. Where I point this out to people that we no longer say grace. We take out our photograph and take a picture of the food. We have moved so far away from giving thanks that we are trying to get the best light and the no shadow on the food so you can post on Instagram and impress your friends. When did food become this thing of impressing people, where you do not give thanks, first of all, for the ingredients, for the farmers, for the people, and then those who will serve you, who will wash your plates. I don't know what's happened to hospitality. We've moved too far away.
Kerry Diamond:
So what I would love to know from you is when we all go visit, what should we order?
Asma Khan:
You should order the toastie, which is a bizarre thing to say. The biryani, there's beautiful food there. But the toastie is something that you will not find in any restaurant, but you will find in every home. It is given to the girls when they come back late from school because no one wants to give them food. But the boys came back from cricket and football and whatever, and they were always served full lunch at three o'clock. The toastie is the fried pieces of chicken or paneer or whatever there is put in two slices of bread with butter, and then it was just roasted on the fire and given to you. And I think that for me, I have made this a badge of honor. I loved it. And when I told people, they were like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, this is just our food." No, it's not our food.
We need to tell the stories. The problem is that too many chefs just present the food to impress. I want to tell you the story of my people, of my women in a way that you understand that food is my DNA. It's my identity. As an immigrant in England, I've used food as a way of connecting to the people, but also connecting to the land. All the ingredients in my restaurant, fresh ingredients, is from England. I'm not cooking fusion food. I'm cooking Aloo Gobi Matar, and it all comes from the farms. I make beetroot croquettes, which is called beetroot chop in Bengal, from the farms, which is near Cambridge, the beetroots come, and I think it's so important to be respectful to where your restaurant is spaced. So for me, food has always been about honor. It's been about the privilege, and we all know there's hunger in the world and there are enough people without food. And in England, there are children who are going to bed without eating dinner.
So when you are in the business of a restaurant, too many people are trying to be impressive and all the kind of wrong things that come from the food, and that is seen as acceptable. The fact that in prime time television, you can have a male chef being misogynous, screaming at women, and people are watching this as prime time television viewing, it breaks my heart. The kitchen is not a toxic place. Restaurant kitchens are like places that look like Mortal Kombat video game, all these kind of toxic, crazy men are shouting and screaming at women and at men who they think are weaker than them. They always pick on the weak. So my restaurant is a place of joy. So when you come, you will get beautiful food cooked with patience and love, and you'll see in the glint of the eyes of the women who are watching you eat the kind of pride that you'll remember your mother and grandmother watching you eat. That's what my kitchen is. It's a beautiful place.
Kerry Diamond:
You are on a crusade to make kitchens kinder, less racist, less sexist, less ageist, places to work. That is quite the battle. Why take this on? You have all the success right now.
Asma Khan:
Life success means nothing. If I cannot clear the pathways for women coming after me. It's so important. So even women who are not born, girls who are not born as yet, I want them to be able to go into a kitchen and own it. The easier path is to have just sucked up all the successes, sat back, done some good financial deals and made a lot of money. I can't live, I cannot breathe if I know that I didn't do something, I am sowing a harvest I will never reap. I will not be there to see women becoming all powerful, for older women to feel that this is an industry they can go in, that they're not dismissed and sidelined.
I hate the double standards and the hypocrisy when you speak to powerful male chefs and say, "Who's the best chef? They say, my mom and grandmom." No one looks like the mom and grandmom in their kitchen. How is it that they have allowed this whole story to be there that, "Oh, they're very respectful to our mothers and grandmothers. We won't hire them." And you have a chef who has said that, "I don't want women in my kitchen because they may get pregnant." Wow. And you still run your restaurant.
And the racism is staggering. You will almost find in every kitchen in England, definitely in London, that the KP, the kitchen porter is black. The amount of racism being directed at them, it is unacceptable. They're doing a hard job. And I find it really hard that these things are not spoken about by powerful men, but I also have to say by powerful women. Michelin star female chefs in England have never spoken up, but there is proved allegation of bullying and racism, misogyny in kitchens. They close ranks with the chefs, the male chefs. You cannot pull the ladder up. You cannot shut the door.
When I was featured as a first British chef on “Chef's Table,” a lot of people would be, "How does it feel to break the glass ceiling?" I don't want to be standing somewhere with bloody broken glass. I want to bring the edifice down. I want to flatten the space. No doors, no windows. Let the women in, let everybody in. Everybody should be doing that. But I'm amazed at the kind of all-boys Mayfair club kind of attitude of thing that let's keep all the women out, let's keep the women who look different, the accented ones out, and definitely, let's keep all the old women out, and they're old the moment they're after 35. The ageism shocks me.
Yes, if I had to chase a bloody deer and catch it, I would never catch it. But this is not a bloody jungle. I am cooking. I am cooking food. I have huge amount of life skill. And of course if someone was picking a football team, I get picked last, fine, look at my body shape, you think, "Oh no, she ain't going to run." I won't run. But when you're cooking, you'll pick me because you think, "She knows food." I look like the type. But the prejudice is crazy that no one will hire an older woman in the kitchen. No moms, no grandmoms. And there are ways, and we've created a system where you can hire women, you can hire moms, you can hire new moms. New moms are the ones you need to really embrace. They're struggling. They're finding it difficult, and we do it.
Kerry Diamond:
I want to talk about moms because there is a lot of prejudice against hiring moms in restaurants. And a big issue facing women and families in the restaurant industry is child care. It's not exclusive to restaurants, but people like to go to restaurants at night. The best restaurants and the ones that win all the awards, you all know this, are designed around dinner service. Yet there is no such thing as night care. Access to daycare is hard enough, but night care barely exists as a concept. You told The Guardian newspaper, why can't you have women coming in doing one shift and then they can look after their kids? Why are kitchens so unwelcoming to moms?
Asma Khan:
Because the rules have been set by men. Everybody comes in to do a double shift. They do lunch and dinner and in between, there's a break. I tell everybody it's not brain surgery. It's not like the surgeon's leaving halfway through. Often, lunch and dinner is different service. You have different food. So we allow women to come in and do one shift and go off to pick up the kids from school, or you pick up your kids from school, give them something. Not that kids are grateful or anything, whatever, but it just makes the mother feel better. You feed them and then you come to work. And they're motivated. They're not anxious about their family. And I think it's a game changer for the children, especially little girls, because when they see their mother working, earning, they see them on television, they see their pictures in newspapers, they can show their friends, and it is not easy.
I struggle with this and I admit it, that I may not be the best mother. I've been a successful restaurateur. I'm an activist, but maybe I let my children down. I wasn't there for Saturday night dinners and everything. I didn't attend all their plays and go to all the parent-teacher meetings. But I think I've made them proud by what I did and I hope they will forgive me. I tried my best. So I try really hard to tell the women who work with me, "Your children will be proud of you one day." You need to be the role model. You need your little girl to feel... And when you say, "My mom is a chef," with pride. You need to give them that something because it's so hard when women just stop working because they stay at home. It's a brain drain. We lose these gorgeous multitasking, fabulous women with huge hearts and great ambition. Behind closed doors, they stay forever. And if I can't do anything about that, then I have also failed.
This is my responsibility. It's a responsibility not just of women, of men and women. I think this thing of us and them is really divisive. My backbone has been empathetic men. I have one sitting here, my ex personal assistant. He's come all the way just to see me for one day in LA. You need to be with men. Your tribe doesn't have to look like you. Your tribe has to believe in you. You find your tribe, and your tribe is really what will make you powerful. And this is what my kitchen is.
Kerry Diamond:
You started a fund called the Second Daughter's Fund. Can you tell us about that?
Asma Khan:
Yes. I felt it was necessary to celebrate the birth of second girls. You can't go into families and lecture them about how wrong it is to discriminate against girls. So all we do is that we actually support families, we send money back to have a little celebration when a girl is born, because the difference between a celebration for the birth of a boy and that of a girl is stark. The house is in darkness. In many places, it's as if a death took place in that house, not a birth. The sense of disappointment, the tears, often, when a girl is born, it's not okay, because I know what it feels like. And I want that girl, so when people would be mean to me, especially when we were fighting over cricket and I would take the bat and run away because I wasn't out and they declared I was out, so I wasn't going to let them play. I disrupted the game and went home.
And then everyone turned around and tell me, "Oh, everyone cried when you were born. No one wanted you." I was tongue-tied, but I want to make sure that some other girl today whose birth we celebrate by sending sweets and firecrackers. You send firecrackers to a house, they'll set it off and then they'll eat the sweets too. So even though they're not celebrating, they get a gift and everyone likes gifts. They eat it. She can say that, "No, we celebrated." I could say nothing. I stood there humiliated, didn't show it. I cried, but nobody could see me. I wasn't going to cry in front of these horrible boys. That's why I just want to do something small.
It's small because you can't go and interfere into families. I tried to go to spaces and talk about it because you really need to have a conversation. You need to first admit this is happening. That still is not done openly. I chose to do this in my episode of Chef's Table. They're bloody brilliant, those guys. They said, "You can talk about anything." I said, "I want to talk about this." "Fine. Speak about this." So it was not food, it was about justice. But they put that in an episode and that made a huge difference because it allowed the conversation to be had about what it is to be a second daughter.
Kerry Diamond:
We have an audience full of women and men who are no doubt restaurant goers and enthusiastic foodies. What should they think about when it comes to where they spend their food dollars?
Asma Khan:
Do not go to any place where there has been allegations, proved allegations of abuse, bullying, racism. Please take your money and spend it in places preferably, where you know that there are more females being employed because that's a kind of positive sign, that means it's not a toxic environment, that they're inclusive, that they actually do not discriminate against people of different sexuality, color. This is so important. Especially now, I know in England with the cost of living crisis, people are going out to eat less.
Every night, I go to every table and say, "I am so grateful you chose to come to us to spend your money and your time." It really is a very big thing. Please support restaurants that are trying to be ethical. It's tough because a lot of it is behind closed doors. You don't have those Michelin stars to hang on your doors and you don't have this fancy food with all this kind of smoke coming out of it. And all these influencers who come and eat free food and then put up posts, they don't do all of that in these places. We need to celebrate also morality, ethics, justice in hospitality.
Kerry Diamond:
You told the Netflix producers that you had this awesome reputation of being the wild child. Are you still a wild child?
Asma Khan:
Yes. And all of us should be wild till death. Because life was there to experience. Raise your voice, do things for others. Shake the world gently around you. Otherwise, if you are just staying on your lane and not doing something exciting and interesting, in the end, when you look back and your life flashes in front of you, it should be exciting. It might have its disasters as well, but it doesn't matter. It should be a life worth living. And I think that's so important.
Kerry Diamond:
As we like to say at Cherry Bombe, Asma, you are the Bombe. Thank you. That's it for today's show. I would love for you to subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a rating and a review. Anyone you want to hear on an upcoming episode, let me know. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is a studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Thank you to CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening, everybody. You are the Bombe.