What happened to Sarma Melngailis from Netflix’s Bad Vegan? The former raw vegan restaurateur from Pure Food and Wine is keeping under the radar, but will she open another eatery again?
- She ran a once-successful high-society raw vegan joint in New York that attracted celebrities including Tom Brady, Anne Hathaway, Gisele Bündchen and Owen Wilson
- Through Alec Baldwin’s Twitter, she met her former husband Anthony Strangis, who she claims subjected her to cultlike techniques, and together they swindled over US$2 million
In 2016, the then 43-year-old, on the run for 10 months, was arrested at a hotel in eastern Tennessee; pleaded guilty to grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, scheme to defraud and violation of labour law; served a total of four months behind bars; and was sentenced to five years’ probation.
Pure Food and Wine’s rise and fall
Melngailis opened Pure Food and Wine together with her then-boyfriend Matthew Kenney and Jeffrey Chodorow, the owner of China Grill Management, in 2004 as New York City’s first upscale raw vegan restaurant. The restaurant was listed in Forbes’ All-Star New York Eateries five years in a row.
The next year, the trio opened One Lucky Duck Juice and Takeaway, a retail store attached to Pure Food and Wine. Melngailis split professionally and personally with Kenney a few years later.
In 2011, Melngailis discovered her now former husband Anthony Strangis, a junk-food-loving gambler with a criminal past, in Alec Baldwin’s Twitter mentions. That’s when things began to go downhill. The New York Times reported that between 2011 and 2016, Melngailis defrauded investors of more than US$2 million. In 2015, both the ventures were permanently shut down when the scandal came to light and her staff walked out en masse. According to the authorities, the couple had failed to pay US$400,000 in sales tax, investors were out of pocket US$844,000, and employees were owed US$40,000 in unpaid wages.