Story of Nusret, the Salt Bae

Nusret Gökçe, also known as the ''Salt Bae'', is a widely-known food entertainer, influencer, and restaurateur. He became world-famous thanks to meme culture. Now he hosts world stars from Lionel Messi to Kristen Stewart at his restaurants.

Life

Nusret was born in Erzurum, Turkey, in 1983. He was the son of a mineworker who was struggling financially. He left school in 6th grade because of the exact reason, financial struggles.

He first started his work life at Bostanci butcher's bazaar. He was a butcher apprentice for a long time. Somewhere along the way, he worked 18 hours a day actively. If you saw one of Nusret's videos, he is highly skilled in chopping meat. He became skilled thanks to the culture of doing as much work done in the shortest time. He started to work in Istinye Park's butcher-restaurant concept. After that, he wanted to see the restaurant culture of other countries. So, he hit the road to Argentina.

He spent all his money to go to Argentina, yet, he learned lots of things because of it. He continued to work in the same restaurant when he came back to Turkey. Claiming that he was the first person to make cooked meat types ''Lokum'', ''Ceviz'', ''Kafes'', Nusret Gökçe then planned to go to the USA, to work in the most renowned restaurants of the USA without a wage.

When he returned to Turkey again, he was penniless and unemployed. Then, founding his own job got stuck in mind. He found the job with his old friend Mithat Erdem, who he chose as his angel investor. Gökçe paid his loan in just 5-6 months to his friend, then he continued to operate the restaurant on his own until 2012. In 2012, Doğuş Group partnered with Nusret Gökçe. Currently, Gökçe has 400 employers and nine branches worldwide.

How Did He Become Famous?

He released a video on Instagram, where he was sprinkling the salt in a special way to the meat and preparing the meal in an extraordinary way. The video got 2.4 million views in under 48 hours. Currently, it has over 20 million views on Instagram and still counting. Nusret Gökçe has 38 million Instagram followers at the moment.