'Ant Man' Paul Rudd digs Kolkata dum biryani at celebrated London restaurant

Once famous as Mike Hannigan of the chartbuster sitcom ‘Friends and now better known as the 'Ant Man' of Marvel films, Paul Rudd is getting the Twitterati all excited over something far removed from his Hollywood persona: Biryani.

Yes, the star was in British Constitutional Law researcher-turned-celebrity restaurateur Asma Khan's acclaimed London restaurant, 'Darjeeling Express'. Khan could not believe her eyes when Rudd showed up for the restaurant's Biryani Supper Club on Sunday (it was his second visit to Darjeeling Express this month) and happily dug into the ‘dum biryani' prepared in the style that is popular in her original home city -- Kolkata.

"Welcome back to @Darjeelingldn Paul Rudd! Today was our #BiryaniSupperclub and I was so happy to serve #Calcutta Dum Biryani to Paul," Khan joyfully tweeted.

Khan opened Darjeeling Express in 2017 in Soho (it has since moved to Covent Garden) with a kitchen manned entirely by women, who are not professionally trained cooks. And ever since she became the only British chef to be featured in the Netflix series, ‘Chef's Table', she has been used to full houses and hosting celebrity guests, the most regular of them being the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

Khan's Paul Rudd tweet, as was to be expected, set off a flurry of Twitter activity. In reply to one of her followers, she tweeted: "It was a relief! 70 guests had been fed. I always sit outside the dining room on the steps after the supper club mains have been served and chat with the guests. Paul sat on the stairs with me."

On his earlier visit to the restaurant on August 1, Rudd was joined by the Emmy-awarded Canadian sitcom star, Dan Levy (David Rose of ‘Schitt's Creek'). Together, they polished off a ‘thali' loaded with ‘pooris', peas ‘pulao' and mutton curry. Levy promptly recorded the moment on Instagram with the words: "Thank you for a truly memorable meal. You can taste the love."

Khan, who studied at Kolkata's La Martiniere School, moved to Cambridge, the UK, with her husband, who's an academic, after they got married in 1991.

Later, she pursued and completed her higher studies from the King's College in London, earning a Ph.D. Instead of pursuing academics or the law, Khan, however, got into the business of cooking after completing her doctoral studies, starting with hosting private supper clubs at her London home, before moving in 2015 to a Soho pub, where she would offer lunches.

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