First the chef known as Salt Bae riled Cuban Americans by dressing up in honor of the late dictator Fidel Castro.
Now Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, the man who became a meme by sprinkling salt over manhandled meat, has incensed the internet again, this time by hosting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as that country grapples with widespread food scarcity.
In three since-deleted Instagram video posts to his 15.7 million followers, Gökçe, who has a restaurant in Miami, performs his usual routine at his Nusr-Et restaurant in Istanbul. He slaps and flips sides of cooked meat for the visiting Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores — sprinkling it with the flourish that earned him tacit internet fame. The Miami Herald downloaded the video before it was deleted.
In it, Maduro smiles and laughs while smoking a cigar as Gökçe finishes the meat— “Look how he salts it!” someone says off camera. Gökçe later presents Maduro with a T-shirt of himself sprinkling salt, draping it over the leader like a bib.
Read more from our news partner, the Miami Herald.
