Salt Bae has set out on a quest to feed 5,000 people devastated by last week’s tremendous earthquake in Turkey.
Since the quake rocked Turkey on February 6, at over 35k people have perished, with another 5.7k dying in Syria.
Tens of thousands of structures have fallen in Turkey’s south and northern Syria. In several communities around the epicentre of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which was followed hours later by an aftershock nearly as violent, whole neighbourhoods were obliterated.
Salt Bae, actual name Nusret Gökçe, is from Turkey and took action this week to aid people affected by the natural calamity, with many left homeless and surviving in cold temperatures.
The 39-year-old celebrity chef posted an Instagram video of his employees making food inside his enormous food truck and lengthy lines of people, including children, lined up to collect the free meal.
‘We started serving hot food to more people, targeting 5000 people every day,’ he wrote in the post.
In the clip, he said: ‘It will be the most important and meaningful service in the world for us.’
There was a lot of praise for Salt Bae in the comments section, with one fan writing: ‘Well done, so helpful in this time of need 👏 all the people who have nothing nice to say about this, when you are feeding 5000 + hot meals a day in the area and paying for it yourself then you can speak, until then shut up.’
Another supporter said: ‘People hate u will be hate whatever u do (even u make a good things ) , so keep do good things always dont care about all.’
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One other weighed in: ‘All these people doing nothing but posting flags on insta are a bunch of haters. This is what we need to see more of humanity helping each other. I’m inspired!!!’
However, some accused Salt Bae of using the crisis as a promotional opportunity, with one arguing: ‘Was a great idea till it become wrong, evident that this was more about advertisement then actually helping. Filming the traumatised peoples faces from close unfair and out of order.’
One critic suggested: ‘How about taking your giant branding off the truck!!!!!’
Another said: ‘Well done but just stop filming and just get on with it. This ain’t advertisement ffs. These people have been and are going through enough. They don’t need people filming them during this horrible time.’
Salt Bae has come under fire in recent years, with his London restaurant Nusr-Et being chastised for its high pricing and the chef himself being chastised for gatecrashing Argentina’s World Cup celebrations on the pitch last year.
