Nusret is Nusret Gökçe, a Turkish chef and butcher who opened his first restaurant in Istanbul in 2010 and this second venture in Dubai in 2014. But the restaurateur is far more famous as the internet sensation Salt Bae after a video of his meat-seasoning technique went viral in 2017.
The Salt Bae approach to flavouring steak is essentially a theatrical toss of salt, dropped from his fingertips onto his forearm before scattering over the meat below. It’s probably not something anyone had thought of doing before but after the video was viewed over six million times on YouTube and turned into countless memes, we’d bet that the technique has been replicated a fair few times since.
Since his name went global, so too have the restaurants, and Gökçe has opened 15 steakhouses since 2017. You’ll now find a Nusr-Et not only in Turkey’s most prosperous places (Ankara, Bodrum, D Maris Bay) but across the Middle East (Doha and Abu Dhabi as well as Dubai) as well as the world’s well-heeled party centres, from Miami and New York to Mykonos and Knightsbridge.
The food proposition is actually very simple. Protein-heavy, beef-based starters of beef carpaccio, smoked beef, smoked rib-eye and steak tartare precede the steak itself, which comes in a variety of international cuts, from Dallas, New York and Kobe to Toscana, tenderloin and tomahawk.
Non-steak options could be beef ribs and the signature spaghetti but if you don’t eat meat, you’re not really in the right place, though you could fill up on jumbo shrimp, sushi and salads tossed with the likes of goat cheese, avocado and tomato.
But as at other Nusr-Ets, there’s more to the place than the food. Huge windows offer stunning views of the Dubai skyline while staff are as slick as you’d expect from the setting in the Four Seasons Resort Dubai.