Did Virat Kohli have beef in Florida? No, couple's food bill from US eatery falsely viral with communal jibes at cricketer – Alt News

Several social media users have recently shared an image of a food bill containing beef dishes and a photo of Indian cricketer Virat Kohli with his family, with the claim that Kohli allegedly had beef at a restaurant in Florida, USA.

Users slammed Kohli for having beef “despite being Hindu”. (Archive)

One user remarked, “You are not The Hindu if you are not questioning Virat eating beef” while sharing the same images of the bill and Kohli’s family. (Archive)

Several other users amplified the same claim. (Archives – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

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Fact Check

A reverse search with the image of the bill led us to several news reports from 2021. According to a report by The Sun, a couple’s food bill ran into an exorbitant amount after they had misread the price of the Triple Seared Japanese A5, also known as Kobe, at Gordon Ramsay Steak.

Triple Seared Japanese A5, as the name suggests, is a Wagyu beef steak preparation belonging to Japanese cuisine, in which the meat is seared or cooked in high temperature three times. A5 refers to the best quality Japanese Wagyu beef, according to the gradation system of the Japanese Meat Grading Association.

The report says the customer, Jeffrey Paige, “appeared to have misread the menu as the beef was actually a staggering $35 per ounce with a minimum order size of four ounces.” The couple had to pay a whopping $615 for the two of them.

The report also mentions that the couple visited the restaurant at Harrah’s in Atlantic City, New Jersey in August 2020. Gordon Ramsay is a celebrity British chef and TV personality who owns a global restaurant chain.

We also verified that there is indeed a Gordon Ramsay Steak at Harrah’s Boulevard in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Additionally, we discovered that there are six other branches of Gordon Ramsay Steak but none of them is in Florida, as per the viral claims.

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Upon a reverse image search of the image of Kohli’s family, we found that Kohli had posted the currently viral image on Instagram on October 20, 2021. The image was reportedly clicked in Dubai, where India played the T20 World Cup. The then-India captain had stepped out with his family for breakfast between T20 World Cup warm-up matches.

Moreover, Kohli has, on several occasions, stated that he switched to vegetarianism in 2018 owing to health issues. “I stopped eating meat completely in the middle of England tour to cut down the uric acid and I have never felt better in my life, to be honest,” Kohli said in an Instagram Live in 2020, according to an Indian Express report.

To sum up, an image of a restaurant bill showing orders for beef dishes is falsely viral on social media, claiming that Indian cricketer Virat Kohli had beef at a Gordon Ramsay Steakhouse in Florida. The Indian cricketer has no connection with the said food bill.

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