Salt Bae became famous for his distinctive style to sprinkle salt on steak.
Turkish chef Nusrat Gokce, popular on social media as 'Salt Bae', is again going viral for his antics at the FIFA World Cup, after the final between Argentina and France.
Here are five points on Salt Bae:
- The chef runs a popular chain of steakhouses called Nusr-Et that often draws A-listers. He owns 22 restaurants across the US, UK, Greece and Dubai. Celebrities like David Beckham, Usher and Kylian Mbappe have visited these restaurants where he also serves gold-covered steak.
- Gokce was born in 1983. His father Fair Gokce worked as a miner. Speaking to The Times in 2019, the chef claimed that he left school at the age of 12.
- In an interview with NBC in 2017, Gokce said he had to work his way up from the bottom and he used to wash dishes. He told the outlet that he used to work more than 13 hours a day as kitchen runner for a butcher. Gokce has posted photos from those days on his Instagram profile.
- Gokce opened his first restaurant in Istanbul at the age of 27. Turkish businessman Ferit Sahenk helped the chef financially, due to which he opened branches in Ankara, Dubai and Doha.
- Gokce's life changed overnight in 2017 when he shared a video of himself preparing an Ottoman steak in his signature style on Instagram. The video has amassed more than 17 million views and shows the chef sprinkling salt on the meat with his hand shaped like cobra.
