Matthew Kenny and Sarma Melngailis in 2005. Photo: Paul Hawthorne/Getty Images
Tomorrow, the world of food will have its own scam documentary series. Netflix will release Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Runaways, courtesy of director Chris Smith, who you may know from projects like Tiger King and Blaze: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. This time, the spotlight is on restaurant owner Sarma Melngailis, often referred to as “vegan Bernie Madoff,” who went from celebrity restaurateur to fugitive after hooking up with a man calling himself “Shane Fox.” The history of Melngailis’ restaurant “Pure Food and Wine” was puzzling at the time and remains incomprehensible now. So to get you up to speed, we’ve put together a quick guide that you can read before watching the movie. Here’s everything you need to know ahead of the documentary series’ release on March 16:
Pure Food and Wine was a raw food vegan restaurant in Gramercy that opened in 2004 when no one had heard of Impossible Burgers or the phrase “plant-based”. However, the restaurant was vegan glamour, not muesli, and three dollar expensive, making spicy thai salad rolls and zebra tomato zucchini lasagna (with pistachio and basil pesto). Vogue called it the sexiest health food ever.
In a Vanity Fair report on the restaurant, Allen Sulkin described the scene:
[T]In the bar scene, yoga-inclined patrons sipped signature cocktails like the Master Cleanse Tini (organic sake with lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper in a martini glass rimmed with crystal date sugar). In the candlelit garden, Anne Hathaway, Stevie Wonder and Rooney Mara could be seen graciously munching on offerings like cauliflower couscous with pickled Persian cucumbers and cultivated hazelnut cheeses. On warm evenings, it seemed as privileged a place as the enclosed Gramercy Park itself.
It’s also the rather famous spot where Alec Baldwin met his future wife, Hilaria, in 2011, as documented in a New York Times wedding ad: “I was standing at the door with my friends when he came over, took my hand and said, ‘I need to know you,” the future Mrs. Baldwin told the newspaper.
When it opened, it was a collaboration between chefs Matthew Kenny and Sarma Melngailis — a couple at the time — funded by restaurateur Jeffrey Khodorov. When Kenny and Melngailis broke up in 2005, she bought out his stake in the restaurant.
Let’s break it down:
・Matthew Kenny opened Matthew’s on the Upper East Side in 1993, making him one of Food and Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs in 1994. who was also in collaboration with Melngailis. By that time, Kenny already had a serious history of financial problems related to his growing empire. “He’s a really nice guy,” his former accountant told the Observer in 2002. “But he doesn’t have a knack for business, and he doesn’t often surround himself with those people.” After their split, he left Pure Food and Wine – not by choice, he told the Times – sued by Hodorow, he opened an education center and natural life cafe in Dumbo and moved to Oklahoma before eventually landing in Los Angeles and launched what would become the new backbone of his improved empire, Plant Food and Wine in Venice (vegan, but not strictly raw food).
・Sarma Melngailis is the central character of this story. After graduating from Wharton, Melngailis worked in finance, first at Bear Stearns and then at Bain, before realizing her true passion and enrolling at the French Culinary Institute. Then she got a job working on Kenny’s cookbook, they became a couple, and in 2004 they opened Pure Food and Wine. Melngailis later expanded the brand with three juicers called One Lucky Duck. Melngailis was also very introverted and very attached to her dog, a red-nosed rescue pit bull whom she named Leon. (This will be important later.)
・Jeffrey Chodorow is the “mega-restaurant” behind China Grill Management, which once had 25 restaurants under its umbrella, including the now-closed Ed’s Chowder House, the closed China Grill, and the still-open Asia de Cuba. Hodorow has also been a sponsor of Pure Food and Wine. A former lawyer, he had his own troubles with the law as he was involved in what the Times summarizes as “the bankruptcy of Braniff International Airlines, which saw him spend four months in jail.” He was also part of the 2003 NBC reality show The Restaurant with Chef Rocco DiSpirito that eventually fixed the legal demise of their professional relationship. It’s possible, however, that you remember him instead from the time he ran a full-page ad in The New York Times for nearly $40,000 lambasting Frank Bruni for zero review of his short-lived samurai-inspired steakhouse, the Kobe Club. . You remember that among the decorations of this restaurant were 2,000 swords hanging bladed down from the ceiling.
・Alec Baldwin is an actor, screenwriter and producer who, let’s put it this way, is no stranger to scandals; Hilaria Baldwin is a yoga instructor and entrepreneur with a controversial Spanish accent.
The first few years of Pure Food and Wine were going great. Melngailis owed Khodorov money—she took out loans to buy out half of Kenny’s restaurant—but the restaurant was profitable. Then in 2011, she met someone named Anthony Strangis. At the time, Strangis called himself Shane Fox and claimed to have made his fortune through his involvement in covert government operations that he was not allowed to talk about.
Exactly. From there, everything gets dark. Strangis promised to give Melngilis enough money to pay off her debts, free herself from investors, and fulfill her dream, but first she had to undergo a series of “cosmic endurance tests” that mostly involved lending Strangis/Fox huge sums of money. “He convinced me that I would get a power that I could not have imagined,” Melngailis told Salkin. “I would have access to unlimited resources so that I could develop my brand around the world, make the documentary that I always wanted to make – one that will finally change the way people live and help eradicate factory farming. In fact, I could do anything that could change the world, which I secretly dreamed of. I could help whoever I want and stay forever young while doing it.” In addition, her dog will become immortal. During this process, she handed over access to her phone, email, and bank accounts.
Melngailis’s staff became increasingly uneasy over what appeared to be Strangis’ influence, and more importantly, over unpaid wages. Melngailis reportedly failed to get paid five times in 2014, temporarily closed the restaurant in the winter of 2015 when employees left, reopened it with new investors, and then closed permanently in the spring. By the end, she had transferred over $1.6 million from her business accounts to her personal account, and Strangis had spent $1.2 million at a Connecticut casino.
Needless to say, Strangis was not actually involved in covert government operations, but rather was a gambler who, according to the Post, “previously served time for grand theft and posed as a police officer.”
As Sulkin explains:
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office accused the two of devastating Melngailis’ 12-year-old raw food restaurant Pure Food and Wine by almost $2 million, defrauding employees, defrauding investors, going on the run, and spending lavishly on hotels. clock and casino.
Eventually, the police discovered that they were camping at the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, tracing an order from Domino’s Pizza.
From outside, and maybe from within, it is very difficult to understand what happened here. One explanation — and one that Melngailis’ lawyers planned to use in court — is that Melngailis was the victim of “coercive control,” which Salkin describes as “a form of domestic violence that can manifest itself as a cult of one, with a spouse as a partner with washed brains.” The idea is that under the spell of Strangis, Melngailis has literally lost touch with reality. This possibility, however true, makes both the situation and the series deeply unsettling.
Sarma Melngailis negotiated a plea deal and was sentenced to four months in prison followed by five years’ probation. As of 2019, she did not mind resurrecting Pure Food and Wine if that was ever possible and was working on a memoir. She lives with Leon and is an active supporter of Pete Buttigieg. She and Strangis, who served ten months in jail and then five years of probation and kept a low profile ever since, are now divorced.
Meanwhile, pit bull Leon doesn’t appear to have become immortal, but he recently celebrated his 12th birthday, as reported on his Instagram.