LET THEM EAT SALT!
Despot feasts as Venez starves
With his country facing starvation, Venezuela’s leftist dictator caused a wave of disgust this week when he was seen chowing down on a pricey meal personally served to him by the celebrity chef known as Salt Bae.
Nicolás Maduro smiled and guffawed as he tucked into a $275 cut of lamb at the posh Nusr-Et steakhouse in Istanbul, Turkey, which is run by Nusret “Salt Bae” Gökçe, famous for viral videos of him seductively sprinkling salt.
In one video of the meal, the chef is seen slicing into the succulent lamb as the cigar-chomping Maduro watches.
It was a display of conspicuous consumption that left many people from the economically devastated South American country boiling with rage.
“While Venezuelans suffer and die of hunger, Nicolás Maduro and [First Lady] Cilia are enjoying themselves at one of the most expensive restaurants in the world,” fumed Julio Borges, the exiled former president of the country’s National Assembly.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio bashed the move and even encouraged people to call a Miami restaurant owned by Gökçe.
“I don’t know who this weirdo #Saltbae is, but the guy he is so proud to host is not the Presi- dent of Venezuela,” Rubio wrote. “He is actually the overweight dictator of a nation where 30 percent of the people eat only once a day & infants are suffering from malnutrition.”
Maduro had stopped in Turkey on the way home from China, where he met with officials in an effort to boost his country’s economy, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported.
The celebrity chef posted videos of the political leader’s decadent dinner on Instagram, where he has nearly 16 million followers. He later deleted it.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” Maduro can be heard saying. Another clip shows him receiving a screen-printed “Salt Bae” T-shirt from the chef.
“[He’s] the Marie Antoinette of socialism,” Twitter user @LSGoldblatt blasted. “Maduro and his cadres are fat with the spoils from looting VZ people. Tragic!”
In Venezuela, an economic crisis has created widespread food shortages as many people live on just $1 a day. Roughly nine in 10 households live in poverty, according to a 2017 study.
Earlier this year, Salt Bae opened a steak joint in Midtown. He later landed in hot water with the city Health Department for handling meat with his bare hands.