Multiple reports confirmed that Turkish celebrity chef Nusret Gökçe, commonly known in the West as “Salt Bae,” quietly closed his New York restaurant “Salt Bae Burger” this week.
Gökçe first became famous in America and Europe for a social media video in which he salted his food.
Beginning his career as a butcher, Gökçe entered the restaurant world by establishing exclusive steakhouses in Turkey, then expanding them into nearly two dozen restaurants worldwide. The Nusr-Et Steakhouses are known around the world for celebrity guests, unreasonably high prices, and several employee abuse lawsuits. “Salt Bae Burger” offered, among other menu items, a milkshake for $99 and a $100 “gold burger.”
$99.00 #saltbae ‘Golden Shake’ w gold leaf?! (c/o our eagle-eyed END OF DAYS correspondent @amortowles) pic.twitter.com/QwwOHpx3Bx
— Adam Platt (@plattypants) February 24, 2020
Since rising to international notoriety, Gökçe has become a darling of communist tyrants around the world, prompting weeks of protests outside of his Miami Nusr-Et Steakhouse in 2018 for gifting Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro a shirt with his (Gökçe’s) face on it at his Turkish restaurant. In 2021, Gökçe regaled senior members of the Vietnamese Communist Party with personal service at his restaurant in London.
Following the death of longtime communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Gökçe posted an homage to the mass murderer on Instagram, sporting a communist-style black beret. The Cuban Black Berets are the domestic security forces the Communist Party uses to kill, torture, and otherwise suppress pro-democracy dissidents.
More recently, Gökçe irritated the soccer community by infiltrating festivities at the 2022 Qatar World Cup and pretending to salt the World Cup trophy, violating FIFA regulations.
Turkish restaurateur Nusret Gökçe, better known as “Salt Bae,” pretending to salt the World Cup trophy on December 18, 2022, in Qatar. Photo by Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images)
According to the Emirati newspaper The National, “Salt Bae Burger” shut down and posted a message claiming to move to a new address. The new address, however, is already a Nusr-Et Steakhouse, suggesting that, rather than relocating, the restaurant is shutting down, and its sister establishment will continue to serve its menu.
“Salt Bae Burger” had a short, tumultuous life, opening shortly before the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic lockdowns of early 2020 and receiving some of the city’s most negative reviews from local critics. In a now-famous review of the establishment, the New York City site Gothamist branded it “the worst restaurant in NYC right now” and “an insult to our city.” Among the review’s criticisms was the fact that nearly all of the restaurant’s decor was photos of Gökçe salting things (“a Salt Bae theme park”) and that “the food is terrible.”
The most well-known item on the restaurant’s menu was a pink-bunned veggie burger that the restaurant offered free to “ladies.” After receiving a barrage of condemnation on charges of sexism, the restaurant’s general manager, Al Avci, told the dining publication Eater that the owners simply wanted “to compliment” the ladies and did not anticipate any pushback on the pink veggie burger.
Avci also confusingly claimed that the burger was free for men.
“In reality, nobody is paying for the veggie burger,” Avci claimed.
Salt Bae Burger maintains an outpost in Turkey and Dubai, the latter of which Avci said had been much more receptive to the pink veggie burger at the time.
While popular in much of America after videos of him salting food went viral in 2017, Gökçe has attracted widespread disgust in the Hispanic community, which he has tried to assuage by appearing on social media alongside high-profile Hispanic celebrities. Shortly after opening a Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Miami, Florida — home to the largest community of Cuban and Venezuelan refugees from communism in America — the chef published a social media post in 2017 to honor late dictator Fidel Castro, which began circulating in local media.
‘Salt Bae’ caught posing as Fidel Castro — and he just opened a Miami restaurant. https://t.co/AXYN10wOGE pic.twitter.com/0BmlJ81R9s
— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) December 4, 2017
Gökçe’s Fidel Castro tribute preceded a visit to his Turkish restaurant by Nicolás Maduro, a Castro protégé and the architect of the collapse of the Venezuelan economy. Gökçe personally served Maduro at a time during which state-fueled mass food shortages were causing health problems for millions of Venezuelans and thanked him for his visit with a “Salt Bae” t-shirt.
¡VENEZUELA SE MUERE DE HAMBRE y el dictador asesino de Maduro dándose un banquete de más de $1.500 con TU DINERO! Ellos comen y los venezolanos nos morimos por la escasez de alimentos y medicinas #MaduroSeJartaConTUDinero pic.twitter.com/rUUhNRbPRv
— Voluntad Popular (@VoluntadPopular) September 17, 2018
Nicolás Maduro ate at Salt Bae’s restaurant and got a Salt Bae t-shirt. pic.twitter.com/q4ciS4fU5y
— David Weiner (@daweiner) September 17, 2018
“I don’t know who this weirdo #Saltbae is, but the guy he is so proud to host is not the President of Venezuela,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) chimed in at the time. “He is actually the overweight dictator of a nation where 30% of the people eat only once a day & infants are suffering from malnutrition.”
Local Hispanic groups representing Maduro’s victims organized large protests outside of Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Miami following the incident. Gökçe, in turn, deleted Instagram posts featuring Maduro, though Maduro effusively praised the chef on state television following his visit, confirming their encounter.
🇺🇸#EEUU Un grupo de venezolanos se concentran en las cercanías del restaurante de la cadena Nus-ret, en Miami para protestar por la atención que tuvo el chef #SaltBae con @NicolasMaduro y @ConCiliaFlores en Turquía. Reporta @doricer #19Sep #TVVNoticias #TVVenezuela pic.twitter.com/QQwkmqvUxM
— TVV Noticias (@TVVnoticias) September 19, 2018
In 2021, Gökçe again appeared to show solidarity with communist leaders by serving Vietnamese Public Security Minister To Lam, a high-ranking Communist Party member, and his aides at the London Nusr-Et. The Vietnamese delegation was in the United Kingdom to attend the United Nations climate alarmism conference COP26.
Images of their wealthy leaders feasting at the restaurant outraged Vietnamese citizens at home, but Hanoi does not respect the right to freedom of expression and severely represses political dissent. In 2022, communist police arrested a noodle vendor identified as Bui Tuan Lam for publishing a video on social media appearing to parody Gökçe, salting his noodles dramatically, on charges of “anti-state propaganda.”