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Darjeeling Express Review - SAVLA FAIRE
food
A friend had bailed on our catch-up for the nth time, so instead of sitting home solo (Chef Savla was at the Illuminating India exhibition at The Science Museum; worth a visit), I consulted my lengthy restaurant list.
Initially hosting supper clubs at home, then later at The Sun and 13 Cantons in Soho, her dream of owning her own place was realised earlier this year.
Her all-female brigade – all of whom are second daughters, who had limited prospects and no professional experience in the kitchen – have been by her side since her supper club days.
Across the room, the terracotta pottery emblazoned with the restaurant’s logo was handcrafted by Pakistani potter and close friend Maham Anjum.
In a faux pas of a tweet from the official Michelin account on 23rd November, Darjeeling Express was commended for having an “all-female kitchen team coping effortlessly with the demand”.
Darjeeling Express review – Kingly Court Indian has inner beauty ...
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Gently earthy and peppery in taste, the mince was made even better by the sauce, served on the side, of umami tomatoes and musky sweet tamarinds.
Prawn malaikari resembled some Thai and Malaysian curries with its mild, creamy, light and sprightly sauce.
Its mild vegetal sweetness and small-grain softness was, unsurprisingly, very much in the vein of a carrot cake – a resemblance furthered by the thin milky cream served in a small ladle on the side.
The tomato sauce smothering them won’t win any awards and leaned a little too much towards the sharp side with not quite enough umami or sweetness to balance things out.
What to order: Mutton kebab; Prawn malaikari; Goat; Onion and chilli gravy; Stewed apricots with cream; Masala chai What to skip: Possibly the dal
review of London Indian restaurant Darjeeling Express by Andy ...
food
This was my second visit to Darjeeling Express, the first restaurant of former lawyer Asma Khan.
Indaba Chenin Blanc 2016 was £23 for a bottle that you can find in the high street for £9, Petri Pinot Noir 2015 from Pfalz was £31 compared to its retail price of £11, and the excellent Chateau Musar 2006 was £52 for a wine that will set you back £29 in a shop.
As you pop each disc in your mouth it bursts with flavour, the tamarind providing pleasing sweetness (14/20).
Hyderabadi tamarind dhal was made with yellow lentils, curry leaves and red chilli, and had good texture (14/20).
It delivers the kind of food that you may eat in an Indian home, and shuns the high street cliché dishes.
Darjeeling Express comes to Carnaby with a permanent spot in ...
food
In a nutshell: Indian sharing platters from supperclub gone permanent.
Summing it all up: She's had lots of success with her pop-ups and residencies and now Asma Khan is launching a permanent Darjeeling Express restaurant in Kingly Court.
After four years of running the very popular supperclub Darjeeling Express, it's time for self-taught cook Asma Khan to settle down with her own restaurant.
She's combining North Indian culinary traditions from her fathe's side, her mother’s Bengali heritage and family dishes from the Nizam court in Hyderabad.
Darjeeling Express's recent residency saw Fay Maschler to praise a recent residency appearance and Chris Pople said "as food as good as this, and service as warm and friendly as this, demands an audience."
Fay Maschler reviews Asma Khan's Darjeeling Express | London ...
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When I was in New Delhi in early March, my friend, the dashing journalist and restaurant critic Vir Sanghvi, took my sister and me to Town Hall restaurant in Khan Market.
On another New Delhi evening, enjoying Manish Mehrotra’s extraordinary evolved food at Indian Accent in The Manor hotel in Friends Colony, I thought that no home cook could or should even attempt to approximate it.
They are fascinated by the menu, which encompasses traditions of royal kitchens as well as those from the Rajput population of Uttar Pradesh, plus Bengali recipes from Calcutta, where Asma was born and brought up, and other family input from Hyderabad.
Asma explains — she does a lot of explaining, it’s sometimes quite hard to stop her explaining — that the food is cooked to her recipes by Indian housewives she has recruited who appreciate the hours kept as they can get back to their families by the evening.
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Darjeeling Express: No trained chefs – they learned from their ...
food drinks staff
I think this whenever I’m on Grace & Flavour duties walking along Kingly Street, past Dishoom, Jinjuu and Pizza Pilgrims and up into Kingly Court, which is constantly filled with hungry tourists enjoying Dirty Bones, Rum Kitchen or Shoryu.
I have much time for Kingly Court, the sleek, modern three-floor food complex, as I feel it gives London’s visitors at least a tiny glimpse into how we actually eat.
And if you’re only passing through and want to meet one Londoner who is making an impact, head to the third floor of Kingly Court, to the newly opened Darjeeling Express, a Calcutta-Hyderabad-Rajput restaurant, and find the proprietor, Asma Khan.
Almost all of Khan’s output – from shikampuri kebab through to her outstanding carrot halwa — has a story attached, either from her royal ancestry or her day-to-day London life.
But I will divulge that her Kingly Court kitchen is staffed purely by talented female friends cooking homestyle food: a slow-cooked Bengali goat curry with an occasional potato; Kala chana, nutty black chickpeas full of bite and vigour.
Darjeeling Express: the amateur cooks turned professional chefs ...
food staff
“Some people come for the food, some people come for the story,” says Asma Khan, in a quiet moment at her new restaurant, Darjeeling Express, near London’s Carnaby Street.
Now, gradually, the part-timers are becoming full-time, and Khan has realised her dream to have an all-female team of chefs (the restaurant’s kitchen porter and majority of the waiters are men).
Many of the chefs were sending part of their wages to family in India, as well as supporting families here, so Khan, who says she pays her cooks the same rate as she pays herself, didn’t let them serve notice on their old jobs until the Carnaby Street site had opened.
Prior to Darjeeling Express opening, Khan spent a day at Tredwells with chef Chantelle Nicholson, who she had met at a food-industry event earlier in the year.
Khan explains that, in a few years’ time, the woman’s children will realise she has done something amazing, but right now they’re still adjusting to days without their mother, so she gets a little extra to buy something for her family every day.