A Story of Pure Food, Gaslighting, and NYC Scandal

From Chris Smith, the executive producer of Tiger King and director of Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, is the latest true-crime documentary from Netflix, Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives., a wild four-part documentary series that tells the story of Sarma Melngailis, a superstar raw food chef from New York City, New York. Sarma married a shady hustler and went from being known as the queen of vegan cuisine to being a woman on the run until she was eventually busted for ordering a Domino’s pizza. Her misdeeds done at his urging resulted in a collateral-damage tally of $6.1 million, according to The Daily Beast.

Melngailis opened Pure Food and Wine in 2004. With customers from Chelsea Clinton to Alec Baldwin, she was a food-world celebrity, at least until she met Anthony Strangis in 2011. After facing prison for grand larceny and fraud for her role in the crimes, Melngailis wants to share her side of the story. Over a decade later, she hopes to share her story of gaslighting and manipulation at the behest of a silver-tongued man in a tale that’s somehow even more con-artist-y than the Tinder Swindler. Strangis/Fox actually made the Wharton graduate believe (like really, really BELIEVE) that her pit bull, Leon, could be become immortal, and then drained her 12-year-old raw-vegan restaurant of nearly $2 million, stiffing employees and investors. The whole sordid affair first came out in Vanity Fair in 2016.

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Bad Vegan Debuts on Netflix March 16th

The Netflix press release for Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. describes the series as “a wild four-part documentary series that explores how Sarma Melngailis, the celebrity restaurateur behind the glittering New York hotspot Pure Food and Wine, went from being the queen of vegan cuisine to being known as the ‘Vegan Fugitive'” shortly after meeting a man who called himself Shane Fox but was really Anthony Strangis, in 2011.

Melngailis was arrested and sentenced after stealing nearly $2 million from the restaurant and its staff and after she and her husband were found holed up in a Tennessee motel by law enforcement. “Their undoing? A charge made under Fox’s real name, Anthony Strangis, for a Domino’s pizza.”

According to the show’s producer, Mark Emms, he felt personally compelled to tell this story about how a woman could be manipulated into doing something like this. He said in the press release that:

I’ve known Sarma for over 15 years and was surprised, confused, and upset when I saw all the sensationalized headlines surrounding her arrest. Sarma and I met up in New York prior to her serving her sentence at Rikers Island and she told me more of what happened. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was the most bizarre and surreal story I’d ever heard and I had to try and make sense of it. How and why did this nightmare happen to someone like Sarma? It was also a story that I found deeply shocking and cruel and it felt important that it be told to a wider audience. I had never made a documentary before, but I knew I needed to get this made.

Well, that’s a raw deal. Although one investor snidely said, “she’s guilty of conduct unbecoming a vegan.” However, maybe they’re just guilty of conduct unbecoming people because vegans don’t hold any moral superiority.

About The Author

Rebecca Kaplan
(113 Articles Published)

Rebecca Kaplan (she/he) has a JD and an MS but believes comics do more good than law. His work can be found at Prism Comics, MovieWeb, Geek Girl Authority, PanelxPanel, StarTrek.com and Comics Bookcase, and in Double Challenge: Being LGBTQ and a Minority, which she co-authored with his wife, Avery Kaplan.

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You can view the original article HERE.