If you are intent on judging New York’s new branch of Nusr-Et only as a steakhouse, you’ll probably be disappointed. Nearly all of the cuts are wet-aged wagyu beef, and thus a little rubbery and low on flavor, though nicely marbled with fat. If, on the other hand, you appraise the place as dinner theater, you will find it satisfying — but only if Salt Bae is in the house.
Salt Bae is the stage name of Nusret Gökçe, a Turkish butcher and steakhouse owner who rose to international fame overnight as an internet meme: Gökçe crouches, wearing dark glasses and peering owlishly at the camera, muscles bulging through his white T-shirt. He then methodically slices the steak in front of him, slapping it with his knife. When finished, he grabs a pinch of salt, crooks his arm like the neck of a goose, and flutters his fingers so the salt tumbles down his bare elbow onto the steak.
This is slightly weird and also slightly gross. A companion and I watched him do it a dozen times as we sat at our table in the rear dining room, which might have been located in a luxury hotel anywhere in the world, comfortable but a little cold. Modern dance music alternating with old rhythm and blues pounded overhead. We’d arrived without a reservation at 5 o’clock on a Sunday, having found it impossible to get one over the phone. We were admitted immediately to the half-empty restaurant, which seats 150.
A walk past a bar and front dining room brought us into a corridor lined with glass cases with steaks and other meats gorgeously arranged. Behind was a bank of charcoal grills and a couple of grill chefs who, in contrast to the frantic meme, displayed complete nonchalance. We finally reached the rear dining room to find supporting players in black aprons, many of them reportedly brought here from Turkey and wearing fisherman’s caps, crisscrossing the room pushing carts.
Next to Salt Bae, these carts represent the other half of the dinner theater aspect of the restaurant. We ordered the sushi ($20), and the dedicated cart soon arrived like a tiny meat Uber. The driver donned thick black rubber gloves while upselling us another piece of sushi ($6), since the order contained three pieces and there were two of us. Then, in the grossest act of the evening, he liberally lubed up the gloves with oil before forming four tiny lozenges of rice and wrapping very thin pieces of filet around them.
The performance continued for several minutes as he set them aflame with a gas torch turned too high, and then applied sauces and crunchy things to the smoldering remains. The waiter told us that Salt Bae insisted we should eat each piece of sushi as a single bite, but really, they were way too small to do otherwise. Next to us another waiter was preparing the beef carpaccio ($30), which involved damp slices of meat spread across a plate, pounding cheese crackers with a knife, rolling up the meat, slicing it like a California roll, and then squirting balsamic all over it.
Despite being a Turkish steakhouse, there is little identifiably Turkish about the menu. In addition to the cart-borne specialties, there are a handful of unremarkable salads, raw seafood offerings, a couple of grilled fish, and the steaks. We regaled ourselves with a butter lettuce salad ($25), served with steak knives because the tough leaves had to be cut, and tossed at the table with too little dressing by our braggart waiter, who insisted on telling us about all the Salt Bae steakhouses he’d worked at.
We then turned to the steak section, which ran to 13 choices, including some items that weren’t really full steaks, like spaghetti with sliced sirloin, rack of lamb, and tenderloin kebabs marinated in milk. Since I’d eaten a hamburger at Peter Luger a few days before, we ordered the burger ($30) for comparative purposes. The server said that the chef prefers the burger cooked medium, so we ordered it as such, contrary to all our instincts regarding burgers.
The burger was thick and juicy, having been placed in a bun, cut in half, and regrilled so the cut surface of the bun was charred. Thin slices of yellow cheese and caramelized onions ramped up the goo factor. At half this price, I’d order it again, though it came with potato chips and no salad or fries of any sort. My half was consumed in four bites, taking two minutes.
But which steak to get? These ran from $70 to $275 without any sides, though many of the choices would feed two, or almost. The flagship of the meat fleet was the “Saltbae tomahawk,” a humongous, long-boned ribeye thickly coated with mustard, and said to be the only dry-aged steak in the place. At $275, you can understand why we demurred. Instead, we got the $100 Istanbul steak, which turned out to be an elongated New York strip steak.
It looked a little lonely when it arrived on its branded cutting board. But then the star of the show bounded up, and he was in the figurative spotlight. With remarkable efficiency and magnetism that drew every eye in the vicinity, he did his little cutting and slapping routine. But we’d already seen it so many times before, on our cell phones and now in person, that it seemed a little stale. The play needs a second act.
The steak was good though, perfectly cooked though not benefiting much from the charcoal fire. Thankfully, it was medium rare rather than medium, with some nice edge fat that we willingly gobbled. We finished up our meat with a serving of baklava that a staff member absurdly prepared at the table by slicing it horizontally and then filling it with melted ice cream.
Service was included on our tab, which had zoomed to $320 for two, including a rather small glass of red Turkish wine for each of us. We went away still hungry. Even for a steakhouse, that seemed expensive. Though for dinner and a play on a date night, maybe the price is right.