By Srijit Das
A collage of two images with a screenshot of an Instagram post showing a restaurant bill and an image of cricketer Virat Kohli and his wife Anushka Sharma, is circulating with misleading claims that the former ate beef at a restaurant in USA.
The Instagram screenshot contains the restaurant bill with dishes such as beef tartar, Japanese A5 12 oz, a premium quality beef from Japan and beef wellington and a comment by the user who posted it thanking Kohli for tasting their signature dishes.
BOOM found that the restaurant bill was posted by a person named Jeffrey Paige, who ordered the dishes while dining at Gordon Ramsay Steak restaurant in Atlantic City, United States in 2020. The picture of Kohli with Anushka Sharma is also old, and was posted by the cricketer in 2021 during the T-20 World Cup held at the United Arab Emirates.
One of the users posted the collage on X (formerly known as Twitter) with a caption that takes a dig at Kohli for consuming cow meat, which is considered sacred by Hindus.
The posts are captioned as, "Virat Kohli Was known That He is Out of Upcoming T20 World Because He Was unable to Hit Sixes. So He decided to Eat Beef. Virat Kohli Took This Advice From His Pakistani Friend Babar Azam. He was eating beef despite being Hindu. Shame on You Virat Kohli."
Click here to view the post.
Another user on X shared the same pictures and wrote, "I Don't know what's happening with Hindus of India *Viral post from the handle of a chef from the USA shows Virat Kohli was eating beef despite being Hindu and so called vegetarian* I don't know the truth but Hindus after becoming rich becomes anti Hindu".
Click here to view the post.
The collage of the two images is also circulating on Facebook with a similar claim.
Click here to view the post.
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Fact Check
BOOM first ran a reverse image search to find out the source of the image of the restaurant bill and found several news articles from 2020 reporting about the image.
According to British news outlet The Mirror, Jeffrey Paige made the whopping bill after ordering the dishes at a Gordon Ramsay Steakhouse in Atlantic City, United States. The article mentions that Jeffrey did not read the food menu carefully and hence, landed with the huge bill at the restaurant. The date stamp in the bill shows the person visited the restaurant in 2020.
Jeffrey took responsibility of his expensive mistake and was quoted by The Mirror as saying, "The steak and the experience were unforgettable, and if I had to make this blunder at any restaurant in the world, I’m glad it was at Chef Ramsay's."
BOOM has reached out to Gordon Ramsay North America if Kohli visited their restaurant. The article will be updated when we get a response.
Gordon Ramsay is a British celebrity chef who owns a restaurant chain across countries like United Kingdom, Singapore, France and United States. His restaurants operate under his name. We also found that Gordon Ramsay's restaurant has a brunch called 'Gordon Ramsay Steak' at Harrah's Boulevard, Atlantic City in New Jersey and several dishes listed in the bill match the menu.
We, however, were unable to find mention of any of their restaurants in Florida, United States, as seen in the viral Instagram screenshot. Additionally we were also unable to find the user @pedrogonzalez who shared the image on Instagram.
Photograph of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma
Kohli had shared the image of him sitting with his wife Anushka Sharma on October 20, 2021.
Click here to view the post.
According to news reports, the image was taken in Dubai when the Indian cricketer took part in the T-20 World Cup held in the United Arab Emirates.
An excerpt from an NDTV report reads, "India captain Virat Kohli took to Twitter on Wednesday to share an adorable photo of himself with his wife Anushka Sharma and daughter Vamika. In the photo, Kohli and Anushka can be smiling and the duo are joined by Vamika at breakfast in Dubai."
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