Restaurant Rivals Salt Bae With Golden Steaks That Are £500 Cheaper

You may be aware that Nusret Gökçe recently opened a restaurant in London - and if you're not, that might be because you didn't know that Nusret Gökçe is Salt Bae's real name.

The Turkish chef's unique seasoning technique won him viral fame back in 2017, and since then, he has well and truly cashed in on his online fame.

But now a restaurant owner in Portsmouth is looking to give him a run for his money, selling steaks covered in gold leaves for more than £500 ($680) less.

A receipt from Nusr-Et's London branch recently went viral, coming in at £1,821.40 ($2,478) with a tomahawk steak priced at £630 ($857).

Scott Matthews, who owns Relentless Steak and Lobster House, reckons Salt Bae is 'taking the mick' with this price, so wants to serve up the same meal for a substantially smaller fee.

Visitors can tuck into the 24-carat tomahawks, served with two sauces, sides and triple cooked truffle French fries for £120 ($163).

That still ain't cheap, but it's significantly cheaper than what Salt Bae is offering.

Scott has now jumped on the bandwagon with the hope of offering up a similar experience but at a less outrageous cost.

The 35-year-old said: "A lot of places won't do it because it costs three times the cost of the meat to gold-leaf it - we put 20 to 25 leaves on each.

"We saw Salt Bae's restaurant and we thought they're taking the mick there. For him, that's got to be about £500 profit in each steak.

"I know London is a bit more expensive but £500 more for one steak? It's exactly the same here really - they use the same kind of meat by-products from where we get ours from."

He continued: "We follow everything on trend and we put it straight on our menu.

"We carve it in front of them and let the customers take their Instagram pictures with the bone.

"It's bringing that 'wow' factor with everyone in the restaurant looking at you. If I'm honest, they probably taste the same as normal steaks."

Adorning the meat is a laborious process. It is left to rest to ensure no blood is dripping out before it is covered in gold by two chefs, which takes around 15 minutes.

But if people are willing to pay extra for a steak which doesn't even taste any different, then Scott is happy to serve it.

He said: "It takes a while to make them - they are fiddly.

"In Salt Bae's restaurant, they've probably got one person who specifically is in charge of gold-leafing it while one of the waiters goes out to do the show.

"Everyone is seeing all the celebrities eating this steak, now the average person can afford it, if they want to spend that."