Latest UpdatesEmpowermentMeet Asma Khan who is changing women’s fortunes via food in war-torn...

Meet Asma Khan who is changing women’s fortunes via food in war-torn countries

Meet Asma Khan, an Indian-born British chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, who has an years-old relationship with Rajasthan. 

She loves the culture, art and food of this land and taking the stories of her forefathers who once stayed here, she envisioned changing fortunes of women in war-torn countries like Syria and Bangladesh via food 

She wants to build new opportunities for them and hence has already started her all women restaurant in London with the name of Darjeeling Express.

This restaurant has all-women team counting 24 in number. The kitchen purely accommodates Indian and Nepali women who are 9 in number, while remaining girls manage the restaurant part.

The restaurant serves the Indian Rajput and Bengali home cooking specialties which have taken it on top charts.

Its success story can be gauged from the fact that 75 per cent non-Asian people comprise her clientele.

However, after meeting a break-even point, Asma aspired to open a cafeteria in war-torn zone Syria.

Asma is a PhD in Law from UK and  is married to an academician. This restaurant was financed by her husband. 

Meet Asma Khan who is changing women’s fortunes via food in war-torn countries

This cafeteria again hired women employees who were tortured one way or the other.

This cafeteria is presently being run in a camp ‘Essyan’ in northern Iraq inside a charity called Lotus.

I started this cafeteria after one of the visitors in my London based restaurant spoke about plight of women and kids in war torn zone and “there I decided to open my cafeteria there’ she says.
The cafeteria was started in July last year. Presently it has five women who know how to cook in big dishes so that their food can satiate the hunger pangs of millions there, she says.

It’s more like giving hopes to people via food in countries like Syria. 

Asma says she opened her first restaurant when she was 47. 

“Age is just a number to visualise your dress,” she says.

Next Asma wants to open a cafeteria in Bangladesh where she wants to help out Rohingya women who have seen too much of sexual violence. Here, she plans to serve Shingara (Samosa ) and chai in The Market which has many shops there.

Next on Asma’s target is  Kolkata’s Red Light area where she wants to start a cafeteria soon.

I have aims and intentions to apply food as a balm on the wounds of these women who are hurt by constant tortures of men. This will be more like a heal on their wounds, she says adding this shall serve a sense of purpose.

“ I want to tell women that they should not stop at this age. They have seen it all at this age, the challenges, the compromises, the missed opportunities, and hence now is the time for them to take up what they have been aspiring for. Women have been cooking since centuries but there has been no reward for them. The other members of the family have been taking her for granted. Am representing these women who wee never given reward for what they did to us. Hence, I have picked food for these women.

Blessed with two sons, she has had craving for a girl child but now she says that girls across the world are my daughters and hence I want to change equations for them.

In spring 2019, Asthma became the first British chef to be profiled on the sixth season of the documentary series on Netflix Chef’s Table which is big achievement in terms of immigrants there, she informs.

Born and brought up in Kolkata, Asma shifted to London after she had an arrange marriage with an academician after which she studied law. After completing her PhD in law, she aspired to start a restaurant with an aim to change fortune of women via food.

However, her husband, an academician, wanted her to empower women via law. But Asma had all different dreams in her eyes which she continues to chase.

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