Salt Bae

About

Salt Bae is a nickname given to Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, who was widely discussed on social media following the circulation of a video in which he flamboyantly sprinkles salt on a carved steak.

Origin

On January 7th, 2017, Gökçe uploaded a video of himself carving a steak and sprinkling salt over his forearm on to the meat (shown below). Within 48 hours, the video gained over 2.4 million views and 8,700 comments.^[1] That day, Twitter user @lolalissaa^[3] reposted the video along the the message “so this is #saltbae.”

Spread

That evening, @lolalissaa reposted another video in which Gökçe hangs a cooked slab of meat over a woman’s mouth, garnering upwards of 3,100 likes and 2,500 retweets in two days (shown below).

Also on January 7th, 2016, Twitter user @elBeardedBandit^[1] tweeted a You vs. The Guy image macro featuring a screenshot of Gökçe sprinking salt (shown below, left). Within 48 hours, the tweet garnered more than 48,000 likes and 33,000 retweets. The following day, Twitter user @NerdyAjet^[4] posted an illustration of Gökçe (shown below, right).

On January 8th, Twitter user @Ratchetveli tweeted a parody video of himself making greit with the hashtag #GritsBae (shown below). That evening, a Twitter moments page titled “The world is obsessed with a Turkish meat monger” was created, highlighting tweets about Gökçe’s video.^[2]

On January 9th, Twitter user @j.kube posted a parody of Gökçe’s video in which he carves several slices of bread before sprinkling salt over his forearm (shown below). In the coming days, several news sites published articles about Gökçe’s online fame, including The Verge,^[5] The Telegraph,^[6] NY Mag^[7] and Elite Daily.^[8]

Search Interest

External References