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Ha ha ha, Salt Bae, what a character, eh? For a number of years now, the famed Turkish seasonal sprinkler has been lighting up the old social media with increasingly stupid bills for the consumers of his steaks. ‘I went to Salt Bae and the bill was £9 trillion and all I had was a chip I found stuck to my foot’ etc etc. That’s not to say that Bae doesn’t have his fans. The famous footage of Maradona being moved to tears as his extra-special meat arrives is something that few grown men who have seen it will easily forget. Still, there’s no doubt that paying hundreds of quid for a chunk of meat sits uneasily in a city of foodbanks.
Now, though, Asda has arrived to have a tongue-in-cheek pop at the circular-sunglassed don of dexter. In a gag that feels like it’s been maturing longer than a well-hiung carcass, ‘Steak Bay’ is the supermarket’s one-night-only pop-up Shoreditch restaurant, which will offer a top-quality steak for NOTHING: scarcely worth opening Twitter for. Diners – 50 of them drawn by a ballot – get to choose from a 21-day tomahawk and extra thick cut, 30-day sirloin, or steak burgers or slow-cooked pork ribs (not really in the spirit of the thing, tbh). In another wheeze, they’re replacing Salt’s notorious flashy gold-leaf antics with good old British tinfoil. The meats will then be seasoned by staff at the table from a height of 200 feet. This last bit is not true. The rest is.
Steak Bay is open for one night only, on Thu Jun 9 at Iron Bloom, 46 Great Eastern St, EC2A 3EP. To apply for a space, visit Asda.com/steakbay and winners will be allocated at random.
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