Salt Bae Faces Backlash For Posing With Fidel Castro Photo

Salt Bae may have been one of the most viral and beloved memes that 2017 started off with, but the man behind the moniker, Nusret Gokcë, is now in a whole lot of trouble, especially in Miami.

Late last November, Gokcë posted a photo of himself on Instagram smoking a cigar against a backdrop of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who passed away a few days before the post went up. In the caption of his Instagram post, Gokcë wrote the following in Turkish: “Sen’de et’de devrim yaptın dedı (Bugün Ankara nusretteyız.” That roughly translates to “They say you started a revolution too (We are in Ankara today).”

Now, Salt Bae faces backlash for that Instagram post because of his newest restaurant. He recently opened a steakhouse in Miami this past September, and local Cubans, many of whom fled Castro’s tyrannical reign, took to social media to protest the controversial image after it was dug up.

How to put your new Miami restaurant out of business in a dayhttps://t.co/HNi562qVMW

— Jacob Mizraji (@thezisko) December 4, 2017

After all of the backlash against Salt Bae on social media, the Miami Herald reached out to his representatives for comment. Within 20 minutes of that e-mail being sent, the Herald reports that the insensitive Instagram post was taken down. The damage to Salt Bae’s reputation, especially in the Miami community, is still piling on, however.