The 39-year-old Turkish fitness fanatic first gained renown
a decade ago with YouTube videos showing him pouring salt on a cut of meat down
his bare arm with an overtly sexual pout.
His 50 million Instagram followers can now see him posing in
his trademark dark glasses and slicked back hair with the FIFA World Cup and
some Argentinian football stars.
How Salt Bae actually got to touch the golden trophy after
Argentina's win over France is the focus of a formal FIFA probe.
Viral social media images show the diminutive chef trying to
fight his way through a swarm of security personnel towards Argentina's captain
Lionel Messi on the pitch after the match.
One clip shows Messi seemingly brushing away Salt Bae and
attempting to walk away.
But a picture subsequently posted on Salt Bae's Instagram
account shows him clasping Messi's hand and gesturing triumphantly towards the
camera.
"You're the man, Messi," Salt Bae wrote next to
the photograph in Turkish.
The picture included the hashtag #saltlife.
That life is being chronicled by smartly-dressed social
media assistants that Salt Bae hires to follow him around and record his every
step.
Gold leaf steak
Salt Bae's carefully crafted persona revolves around
machismo and phenomenal endurance and skill.
The chef generally does not speak.
He occasionally growls a satisfied but barely
distinguishable word following a long night that he crowns with a cigar puffed
after performing a few acrobatic tricks with a golden lighter.
His juggling acts with a razor-sharp knife and huge slabs of
very expensive meat made his career -- launched in a lowly butcher shop on the
Asian side of Istanbul.
Salt Bae told AFP in 2020 that he still views the Turkish
megalopolis as the "capital of the world".
But he now heads a global chain stretching from Las Vegas to
London that serve $1,000 gold leaf steaks to a clientele made up of fellow
trendsetters and celebrities.
Salt Bae can still occasionally be seen jogging around
Istanbul's more upscale neighbourhoods with impressive weights strapped around
his bulging calves and arms.
His attention to his own physique is part of the chef's
peculiar charm.
His early morning workouts are chronicled in great detail
and include endless flexes of his biceps for the camera.
But this self-aggrandisement is laced with boundless irony
that shines through when he happily posts some of the most scathing reviews of
his food and general behaviour.
Critics have roundly panned his London Nusr-Et outpost --
one of 22 he now has around the world.
The Guardian's food critic called it "a ludicrous
restaurant". GQ magazine agreed that the steak Salt Bae serves in New York
is "mundane, somewhat tough and rather bland".
"It does not matter," GQ added. "One does not
visit Salt Bae for steak alone any more than one goes to Mass for the
wafers."
Salt Bae happily gloats at all the attention while
accumulating a fortune that various media reports estimate at up to $70
million.
"All publicity is good publicity," he wrote on
Instagram over a picture of one of the more painful London reviews.
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