Nusret Gökçe (; born 1983), nicknamed Salt Bae, is a Turkish butcher, chef, food entertainer and restaurateur whose technique for preparing and seasoning meat became an Internet meme in January 2017. He owns Nusr-Et, a chain of luxury steak houses. , he has Nusr-Et branches in Turkey, Greece, the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. The name of his restaurant chain comes from his own name and "Et", which means "meat" in Turkish. Early life Nusret Gökçe was born in Paşalı, a village in Şenkaya district of Erzurum Province, to a Kurdish family. His father, Faik, was a mineworker. The family's finances forced him to leave school in the sixth grade (aged 11–12) to work as a butcher's apprentice in the Kadıköy district of Istanbul. Career Gökçe visited several countries including Argentina and the United States between 2007 and 2010, where he worked in local restaurants for free, in order to gain experience as a cook and a restaurateur. After his return to Turkey, Gökçe opened his first restaurant in Istanbul in 2010, and later opened a Dubai restaurant in 2014. In January 2017 he became more widely known as Salt Bae through a series of viral Internet videos and memes that show him "suavely" cutting meat and sprinkling salt, such as "Ottoman Steak", posted on his restaurant's Twitter account. The post was viewed 10 million times on Instagram, after which he was dubbed "Salt Bae" due to his peculiar way of sprinkling salt: dropping it from his fingertips to his forearm, and then onto the dish. Due to the viral exposure gained from this post, Gökçe's profile has expanded enormously and he has served a wide range of celebrities and politicians from around the world. Critical reception Despite the international fame, early professional reviews in 2018 of his New York City steakhouse were generally negative. The New York Posts Steve Cuozzo called the restaurant "Public Rip-off No. 1" and Joshua David Stein writing in GQ called the steak mundane and the hamburgers overcooked. Other critics described the dishes as "over-salted as they are overpriced", the "meat was tough with globs of fat and gristle, and severely lacking in flavor", and that "finishing a meal there constitutes some kind of personal victory over your own body and instincts and mouth". Reviewers described the dining experience as "overpriced". However, for entertainment, reviewers were more