First published November 4, 2021.
In the autumn of 2021, a recruitment advert for Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Knightsbridge, the London branch of the restaurant chain run by Turkish chef Nusret Gökçe, better known as "Salt Bae", offered a chef de partie between £12 and £13.50 an hour, plus tips. The same dining room was selling individual steaks for hundreds of pounds, with the most extravagant cuts on the menu priced at well over £1,000. Put side by side, those two numbers became a viral story about who earns what in high-end hospitality.
The short answer to what happened: the advert was real and was widely reported, the wage was legal and above the UK minimum at the time, and the backlash was less about this single job than about a wider feeling that luxury restaurants profit hugely while kitchen pay stays modest. Below we look at what a chef de partie actually does, how the pay compared with typical UK earnings, what critics said about the restaurant, and why the story struck such a nerve.
What the job advert offered
The vacancy, reported by the Daily Mail in early November 2021, was for a chef de partie at the Knightsbridge site. The listing promised work with premium British and imported ingredients inside one of the best-known steakhouses in the world, a role within a large brigade supporting the head chef during service, and the chance to build an international career with the group. It described the salary as "highly competitive".
The hourly range of £12 to £13.50 was the detail that caught attention. Tips were mentioned as an extra, though adverts rarely say how much those add in practice, or how they are shared between front-of-house and kitchen staff.
What a chef de partie does in a professional kitchen
Many readers assumed the role was a junior assistant post. It is not. In the classic kitchen brigade system, a chef de partie, sometimes called a station chef or line chef, runs one section of the kitchen: the grill, the sauces, the fish, the garnish or the pastry. They are responsible for preparing that station before service, cooking its dishes to standard during the rush, and often supervising one or two commis chefs below them.
Above the chef de partie sit the sous chef and the head chef. So while it is not a management position, it is a skilled, accountable job that usually takes several years of experience to reach. In a steakhouse where the grill is the heart of the menu, the person in charge of a station handles the most expensive product on the premises every night.
Was £12 an hour unusual?
In April 2021 the UK National Living Wage for workers aged 23 and over was £8.91 an hour, so the advert was comfortably above the legal minimum. It was also roughly in line with what many London restaurants were advertising for similar roles at the time, which is partly why hospitality workers argued the story was about the whole sector rather than one owner.
For comparison, the Office for National Statistics reported that median weekly pay for full-time UK employees was £611 in April 2021, or about £2,650 a month before tax. That puts one claim from the original coverage in perspective: a £1,400 steak was not "a month's average salary", as some reports suggested, but it was around half of a typical full-time worker's gross monthly pay. Still a striking comparison, just not quite the one that went viral.
Who is Salt Bae?
Nusret Gökçe was born in 1983 in Erzurum Province in eastern Turkey. He left school young and trained as a butcher's apprentice in Istanbul, later working in restaurants abroad, including in Argentina and the United States, to learn about meat and grilling. He opened his first Nusr-Et restaurant in Istanbul in 2010 and expanded to Dubai in 2014.
Global fame arrived in January 2017, when a short clip of him slicing a steak and then sprinkling salt off his forearm in a theatrical arc spread across social media. The gesture earned him the nickname "Salt Bae" and turned a regional restaurateur into a meme and a brand. By 2021, Nusr-Et had branches in at least nine countries, including the US, the UK, Greece, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and his Instagram following ran into the tens of millions.
What critics said about the London branch
The Knightsbridge restaurant opened in the autumn of 2021 and quickly became famous for its bills. One table's receipt of roughly £37,000 circulated online in October 2021, and gold-leaf-wrapped steaks became the restaurant's signature photo opportunity.
Professional reviews were harsh. Jimi Famurewa, restaurant critic for the Evening Standard, praised one wagyu dish but judged most of the cooking amateurish and overpriced. His blunt verdict was widely quoted: "This is a bad restaurant." He also poked fun at the clientele, sketching a crowd of wealthy young parents, rich teenagers and aspiring influencers.
Customer reviews online were noticeably kinder. Many diners described the visit as a show they had paid to see, with the salt-sprinkling ritual, the tableside service and the photos for social media as much a part of the product as the food itself.
Why the story struck a nerve
The advert landed at a sensitive moment. After the pandemic lockdowns, UK hospitality was struggling to recruit, and many cooks and waiters had left the industry for jobs with more regular hours. Union and worker groups were arguing that long shifts, split shifts and low base pay were driving people away.
A restaurant famous for extreme prices offered a clean, easy-to-share contrast. The comparison between a side dish of mash and an hour of a chef's labour was memorable precisely because it simplified a complicated picture.
It also connected with Gökçe's earlier history. In 2019, four former employees in the US sued him, alleging they had been denied a fair share of tips; the case was settled. Later, in 2023, a Business Insider investigation reported fresh allegations from former Knightsbridge staff about tips and treatment at work. Those later reports do not change the facts of the 2021 advert, but they help explain why readers were already primed to see it as part of a pattern.
How to read stories like this
Price-versus-wage headlines are effective, but they leave out much of what decides whether a job is fair:
- Hours and contract: A reasonable hourly rate can still add up to an exhausting week if shifts run to 12 hours or more.
- Tips and service charge: In the UK, rules introduced in 2024 now require employers to pass all tips to workers, but in 2021 policies varied widely between restaurants.
- Progression: A recognised kitchen on a CV can be valuable for a young chef's career, which is one reason famous restaurants can attract staff without leading on pay.
- Costs behind the menu: Menu prices also cover rent in one of London's most expensive districts, imported premium beef, and a large team, so the gap between a steak's price and a cook's wage is not pure profit.
None of that makes the contrast meaningless. It simply means the honest takeaway is a question rather than a punchline: when a restaurant sells a spectacle at luxury prices, how much of that value reaches the people who cook it?
The advert and its pay belong to 2021; anyone looking at hospitality wages today should check current vacancies and the latest National Living Wage rate rather than treating these figures as a benchmark.
Sources: Original report: Daily Mail (November 2021). Background: Salt Bae (Wikipedia); critic round-up including Jimi Famurewa's Evening Standard review: Harden's, October 2021; UK earnings: ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2021.
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