Mikel Arteta’s ‘Salt Bae’ schtick leaves a sour taste

In December 2022 we dared to dream that we had seen the last incursion into football by Nusret Gökçe, the Turkish butcher. That description makes him sound like an uncompromising Galatasaray midfielder, in fact he is better known as Salt Bae, a post-viral irritant who peddles overpriced steaks to fools.

Somehow he featured in the on-pitch celebrations when Argentina won the World Cup, even holding the trophy at one point, an honour supposedly reserved for former winners and heads of state. Gökçe, publicly shamed afterwards, said: “I would never, ever step on the World Cup pitch again.” Yet his mutual love affair with the stars of the sport continues.

Mikel Arteta is his latest willing victim. Arsenal are in Dubai, warming up during their winter break, and their manager visited the restaurant where a 300g striploin steak will cost you £115, £363 if you wish to add 100g and a layer of delicious, tasteless gold leaf.

To Arteta’s credit he seems to have resisted the urge to behave like a mediaeval king by eating actual gold while the peasants starve in their fields. To Arteta’s shame, well, more or less everything else:

The grisly video shows Gökçe doing his performative cutting routine, looking like a man slicing meat for the first time having only previously read about it in books. Arteta indulges him, before the unhygienic forearm-salt-waterfall ritual is performed either by Arteta’s dining companion or a Gökçe underling, freed temporarily from his life of toil in the salt mines of the Four Seasons Dubai.

Then Arteta obligingly tilts his head back to dentist’s chair angle to eat straight from Gökçe’s fork. None of this is improved by the slow-motion manner of filming, nor the slight but unmistakable grimace as Arteta attempts to tolerate food described by one of the more polite negative online reviews as follows: “Yikes, I can find much juicer steaks elsewhere.” Predictably many Arsenal supporters are appalled, and not just because juicier steaks were available.

Usually if we are criticising Arteta it is for his touchline behaviour, occasionally for slippery slope comments about refereeing standards. When he used words such as “disgraceful,” “sick” and “embarrassed” about a dodgy Newcastle goal in November, Arsenal doubled down and released a statement backing their manager. No similar statement so far supporting his right to be fed like a juvenile sparrow by a man wearing sunglasses indoors.

It seems curious that an urbane, switched-on sort such as Arteta would choose such an obviously tacky restaurant but some mitigating factors could be at play. Perhaps he was badgered by a family member, and goodness knows we all put our parents through some objectively vile culinary experiences. Still not sure my father has forgiven me for multiple trips to the short-lived American-themed Bromley restaurant Yankee Doodles, where kids got crayons to draw on paper table cloths and adults paid £25 a head for the worst meal of their lives.

Yet the grown men of top-level football are eternally susceptible to premium naffness, especially the sort served up by Gökçe and his ’gram-friendly food-adjacent content. The list of players to have posed with Gökçe spans David Beckham to Virgil van Dijk, Roberto Mancini to Ashley Young. No one is immune, although Arsenal would like to think they hold their leaders to a higher standard.

Video does Arteta no favours

Let us not get too misty-eyed about marble halls and Herbert Chapman, Arsenal is also the club of Nicklas Bendtner and a current away kit which is a luminous hate crime. No clubs emerge from the grubbiness of modern football looking “classier” than any other in the long term. Easier to look outside of Arsenal and imagine which other Premier League managers might choose not only the Salt Bae experience, but allowing themselves to be photographed during it, then eating off the dude’s fork.

Well, actually, you can make a case for most. Picture Sean Dyche in Arteta’s position and I would argue he would be looking substantially more thrilled, especially if he was brought a side of gold-plated worms.

Arteta’s promise is predicated on his potential to become a brilliant Pep Guardiolaesque cult-like leader of champions. Clearly that status is sturdy enough to withstand the odd mis-step.

But, along with his team’s form, this video does him no favours.

A previous version of this article suggested Pep Guardiola would not go anywhere near Salt Bae. X user @afcfelix found photographic evidence to the contrary. I regret my error, and having faith in Guardiola’s taste in restaurants.

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