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Salt Bae reveals customer’s £56,000 Pétrus and Louis XIII bill
Nusr-Et Restauranteur Salt Bae has been met with criticism after posting on his Instagram account a customer’s £85,000 food and drink bill at his Dubai establishment.
The chef, whose name is Nusret Gokce, originally became famous online for his dramatic salt sprinkling on steak, before going global with the Nusr-Et restaurant chain.
Social media posts of celebrities and the wealthy dining at these institutions, where Gokce charges for his unique sprinkling at the table-side, subsequently went viral. The chain currently has 20 sites around the world, including in London, New York, Dubai and Beverley Hills, with prices for the trademark gold steaks coming in at hundreds of pounds.
Now, Gokce has posted one receipt from 20 January at his Dubai restaurant, which saw a phenomenal £56,000 spent on wine alone, and the overall bill landing at a staggering £85,000.
The main cost came from three bottles of Château Petrus, two from the 2009 vintage and one from 2011, as well as five double serves of Rémy Martin’s Louis XIII cognac.
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Alongside the food, which included £360 golden steaks and a golden filet mignon at £240, the diners also swigged four Porn Star Martinis for £100 and one diner opted for a Monkey 47 gin and tonic at £28.
Five still waters that were also ordered came to £53 and a single sparkling water came to more than £10 alone.
The customers tips also came to £19,000.
Salte Bae captioned the post with “Money comes, money goes”, but was met with immediate criticism of the costs of the meal by Instagram users, who highlighted the cost of living crisis and various other global issues.
Vintage
The 2009 vintage of Pétrus was given 100 points by infamous wine reviewer Robert Parker on his Wine Advocate site, describing it as “an opulent Petrus very much in the stylistic family of the 1990” and “a wine of great intensity, a multidimensional mouthfeel and full-bodied, stunning concentration, the 2009 Petrus 2009 is everything one would expect of it.”
A bottle normally can be purchased for around £5-6,000, meaning Nusr-Et was undertaking a mark-up of around three to four times the purchase price.
In terms of the 2011 vintage, in what was a more challenging year, Parker gave this wine 95 points and said it was “an undeniable success” and “rich, layered and pure” while Tim Atkin MW said it was a “lighter, more manicured Pétrus”.
Louis XIII
Rémy Martin’s Louis XIII has long been considered the pinnacle of luxury Cognac and a favourite of Kings and Queens, statesman and celebrities from Tsar Nicholas II to Picasso, Churchill and de Gaulle.
First created in 1874, the brand is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year and often comes with beautiful, elaborate packaging, with a variety of boxes often available at auction going back to the 1960s and 1970s.
Last year, Douglas Blyde spoke to cellar master Baptiste Loiseau who, when talking about what made the cognac special, said: “It is a blend sourced from a multitude of our cellar’s most precious eaux-de-vie, which have been set aside for their preciousness and their rare potential to age in our cellars until they reveal their true aromatic potential.
“The essence of Louis XIII Cognac lies in expressing the wonders of our terroir that reveal themselves in our tierçons (traditional wooden barrels made from the superior oak trees grown in the Limousin forests of southwest France) through time and savoir-faire.”