DESIGNER

Maggie Ju

PROFILE/DESCRIPTION

Article text courtesy of nytimes.com “In a Starving World, Is Eating Well Unethical?”

A meditation on the true cost of dining when nearly one-third of the planet lacks regular access to food.

MIDAS IS IN the kitchen. A tomahawk steak gleams, leafed in 24-karat gold, with only the long handle of the bone left bare. When pierced with a knife, the gilded slab reveals itself to be actual meat, mottled pink and swaddled in fat. Steam rises, as from a fresh kill. Such a steak — a signature of the Turkish chef Nusret Gokce, better known as Salt Bae — appears in a video that went viral last November, in which Gokce himself delivers the golden calf to the table of General To Lam, the Vietnamese minister of public security, at Nusr-Et steakhouse in London. The chef slices and slaps the cuts of meat so they tumble like dominoes, then stabs one with the tip of his knife and reaches it across the table toward his high-ranking guest. The general opens his mouth and accepts the bite as if it were his due.