Nusret Gökçe (39), the Turkish cook who became a hit on the internet with his iconic hand movement, is closing his hamburger restaurant Salt Bae Burger in the American city of New York after barely three years. It has received bad reviews in recent years. For example, the news site ‘Gothamist’ called the burger place “the worst restaurant in New York City”.
In 2017, Gökçe went viral when he shared a video on Instagram in which he sprinkled salt on a steak in a very special way. The Turk became extremely popular and was nicknamed ‘Salt Bae’. His eponymous burger chain first opened in Dubai in 2019. A year later, he built a second restaurant in Manhattan, New York City.
Golden milkshakes
The menu was special: from free ‘ladies burgers’ with pink buns to a gold milkshake for $ 99 (just over $ 90.65) and a hamburger wrapped in gold foil that cost $ 100 (91.55 euros). The hamburger exclusively for women was not well received and was labeled as sexist. “We wanted to compliment the ladies,” the restaurant’s manager told Eater, an American food news site, after all the criticism. The citizen was well received in Dubai, he added. “We didn’t think it would be sexist.” According to a reviewer for Eater, the restaurant had “all the charm of an airplane hangar”.
LOOK. Images show how Salt Bae serves customers while calling
“Rude staff and not tasty food”
In recent months, Nusret Gökçe’s behavior and the service at his Salt Bae Burger restaurant have been criticized. If you wanted him to come and sprinkle salt on your steak in his special way at your table, you lost 550 euros. And that was not recommended, a customer wrote on social media in December 2022. For example, he would not have had an eye for the people sitting at the table and he continued to call with AirPods in his ears. “The staff was very rude and the food wasn’t even good,” was the criticism.
In April, the news site Insider investigated allegations of discrimination against former employees at its restaurants. The site’s editors spoke to nine former staff members who accused Gökçe of being a tyrant. The lawyer representing the internet phenomenon and its companies, Christy Reuter, then stated that the allegations were repetitions “of old lawsuits in which the claims were contested and have long since been resolved.”
LOOK. Explained in 75 seconds: who is Salt Bae?
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