Netflix Just Opened a ‘Bad Vegan’ Pure Meals & Wine Pop-Up Cafe

Previous New York City vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine—which is showcased in Netflix’s new docuseries Terrible Vegan—is bringing the eatery’s most well known dishes again to NYC fans a single very last time. Netflix teamed up with shipping and delivery app Postmates and two former Pure Food and Wine cooks to present a 3-class meal for cost-free till March 27. 

The Netflix pop-up, termed “The Lousy Vegan Kitchen,” provides 3 primary Pure Food items and Wine dishes: the Caesar salad, the Signature Raw Lasagna, and Mallomars for dessert. Pure Foodstuff and Wine former head chef Nikki King Bennet and former pastry chef Missy Maidana are cooking the foods in a ghost kitchen area in NYC’s Lessen East Facet all weekend extended. NYC locals can location an purchase via the Postmates shipping app anytime all through lunch or dinner for the up coming a few days—for no cost, which include free of charge delivery—while materials last.

Postmates

Undesirable Vegan premiered on Netflix on March 16 as a four-episode documentary that chronicles the downfall of Sarma Melngailis, co-founder of Pure Food items and Wine, a famed raw vegan restaurant in NYC that captivated celeb diners such as Alec Baldwin and Owen Wilson. The cafe was pressured to near in 2015 after Melngailis was caught in a prison plan that included fraud, grand larceny, and violations of labor guidelines. 

Poor Vegan’s stunning tale

It all begun when Melngailis achieved and married conman Anthony Strangis (who referred to as himself Shane Fox). She alleged that he coerced her into thieving revenue from her have restaurant and later likely on the operate from authorities. 

About the program of two several years, Melngailis wired neary $2 million to Strangis, who promised to pay out off her debts and make her pet, Leon, immortal. Strangis inevitably took regulate of the restaurant although he and Melngailis traveled all over Europe. For the duration of this time, Pure Food items and Wine stopped having to pay workers, who walked out in protest. Strangis was uncovered to have spent the restaurant’s cash on gambling, touring, and browsing. 

A pizza order placed at Domino’s led federal authorities to a Tennessee lodge place the place the duo was in the end arrested with a litany of fees. It was also afterwards discovered that Strangis took practically $450,000 from Melngailis’s mom, a crime he was in no way billed for. Strangis ultimately invested practically a yr in Rikers Island jail in New York while the legal proceedings took put, and was then positioned on probation. For her involvement, Melngailis pled guilty to fees of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, and a scheme to defraud in exchange for 5 years’ probation. She also served 4 months driving bars during the summer season of 2017. 

Netflix

What transpired to Pure Food and Wine’s employees?

Even though the Netflix documentary portrays the tale as one particular of manipulation, viewers are remaining wondering what truly occurred, and who was at fault. The first Pure Food items and Wine restaurant has been sitting down empty considering that it shut in 2015, and its workforce were left unpaid and with no work.

“The fantastic people who’d worked at the enterprise back again then were being ideal to be devastated and indignant,” Melngailis wrote on her site. “It was as if I’d abandoned them, which in effect I did. There was no real gun to my head so it will be mentioned that of program I experienced a decision. I get that.”

However, Melngailis says she arranged for producers to fork out her in trade for the resource elements she delivered for the Netflix documentary. She claims that funds went straight to her previous employees—who sued her for unpaid wages—for the overall total they were being owed soon after she fled in 2015, and that the Netflix producers compensated an lawyer on her behalf who then wired full payment right to the legal professional symbolizing the staff.

“Of all the damage and the several debts resulting from my downfall, this part weighed heaviest,” Melngailis wrote. “I was relieved after this payment went through, but that was just a compact section of what stays superb. I want to be distinct that I’ll keep performing in direction of addressing it all—one way or another—eventually.”

For additional vegan information in NYC, read:
NYC Joins 40 Cities and States in Adopting Meat-Free Monay
NYC’s Prime Restaurant Eleven Madison Park Goes Plant-Based
NYC General public Educational facilities Now Serve Vegan Foods to 930,000 Students Each Friday