Eat here now: Darjeeling Express reviewed

Darjeeling Express lives at the top of Kingly Court, just off Carnaby Street, which was once the world-famous embodiment of Swinging London but now seems the global capital of the sports shoe. No matter – Kingly Court, which is built in the shape of a medieval coaching inn, is a happy nook: it is shut away, which means you can’t see sport shoes from the window. It is small in scale; it is for Londoners in their thinning melting pot. Kingly Court already has a superb restaurant in Imad’s Syrian Kitchen. Darjeeling Express, newly opened, joins it on the second floor.

It used to be a yoga studio, but I don’t let that bother me: the yoga hags have fled. It has high eaves, pretty windows and lamps that look like orbs. The walls are pale, the floors are wood. It is not overstyled, monied or contemptible. It belongs to Asma Khan, a self-taught cook, and a child of two Indian royal families. But girls must make their own way if they want to be free: Khan has said that her birth – she is the second of two daughters – was a disaster (one girl is a misfortune, two is carelessness, etc). She had an arranged marriage, moved to England, and taught herself to cook with the help of an aunt. She also took a PhD in British constitutional law.

Her first restaurant was a supper club in her home in Kensington. The second – called Darjeeling Express, named for a train she would ride in the summer holidays as a child – was here in Kingly Court. Then Khan moved to a wedding cake in Covent Garden on the corner of Garrick Street and King Street, squashing Carluccio’s, which deserved it.