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

Former New York Metropolis vegan cafe Pure Food items and Wine—which is featured in Netflix’s new docuseries Lousy Vegan—is bringing the eatery’s most popular dishes again to NYC supporters one particular previous time. Netflix teamed up with delivery app Postmates and two former Pure Foodstuff and Wine chefs to offer a 3-training course food for free of charge until March 27. 

The Netflix pop-up, called “The Bad Vegan Kitchen,” delivers three primary Pure Food items and Wine dishes: the Caesar salad, the Signature Uncooked Lasagna, and Mallomars for dessert. Pure Food items and Wine former head chef Nikki King Bennet and previous pastry chef Missy Maidana are cooking the meals in a ghost kitchen in NYC’s Lessen East Facet all weekend very long. NYC locals can put an purchase as a result of the Postmates delivery app at any time during lunch or supper for the following 3 days—for absolutely free, which includes absolutely free delivery—while materials previous.

Postmates

Negative Vegan premiered on Netflix on March 16 as a four-episode documentary that chronicles the downfall of Sarma Melngailis, co-founder of Pure Foods and Wine, a famed raw vegan cafe in NYC that captivated celebrity diners these kinds of as Alec Baldwin and Owen Wilson. The restaurant was pressured to shut in 2015 soon after Melngailis was caught in a felony plan that concerned fraud, grand larceny, and violations of labor regulations. 

Bad Vegan’s surprising story

It all started when Melngailis fulfilled and married conman Anthony Strangis (who termed himself Shane Fox). She alleged that he coerced her into thieving dollars from her possess restaurant and later on likely on the operate from authorities. 

More than the study course of two yrs, Melngailis wired neary $2 million to Strangis, who promised to pay out off her debts and make her puppy, Leon, immortal. Strangis finally took command of the cafe when he and Melngailis traveled close to Europe. Through this time, Pure Food stuff and Wine stopped paying staff members, who walked out in protest. Strangis was uncovered to have spent the restaurant’s dollars on gambling, touring, and searching. 

A pizza get positioned at Domino’s led federal authorities to a Tennessee hotel space the place the duo was in the end arrested with a litany of prices. It was also later on observed that Strangis took virtually $450,000 from Melngailis’s mom, a criminal offense he was never charged for. Strangis in the long run used almost a calendar year in Rikers Island jail in New York though the lawful proceedings took position, and was then placed on probation. For her involvement, Melngailis pled responsible to fees of grand larceny, felony tax fraud, and a plan to defraud in exchange for 5 years’ probation. She also served four months driving bars during the summer of 2017. 

Netflix

What transpired to Pure Meals and Wine’s staff members?

Even though the Netflix documentary portrays the tale as one of manipulation, viewers are left questioning what essentially transpired, and who was at fault. The initial Pure Food items and Wine cafe has been sitting vacant considering the fact that it closed in 2015, and its workforce ended up left unpaid and with out jobs.

“The excellent people who’d labored at the company again then have been ideal to be devastated and indignant,” Melngailis wrote on her weblog. “It was as if I’d abandoned them, which in effect I did. There was no actual gun to my head so it will be reported that of program I experienced a decision. I get that.”

Having said that, Melngailis says she organized for producers to shell out her in exchange for the supply supplies she offered for the Netflix documentary. She statements that income went straight to her former employees—who sued her for unpaid wages—for the whole quantity they had been owed following she fled in 2015, and that the Netflix producers compensated an lawyer on her behalf who then wired full payment immediately to the attorney representing the workers.

“Of all the harm and the several money owed ensuing from my downfall, this part weighed heaviest,” Melngailis wrote. “I was relieved as soon as this payment went by way of, but that was just a small aspect of what remains fantastic. I want to be apparent that I’ll hold performing toward addressing it all—one way or another—eventually.”

For much more vegan news in NYC, examine:
NYC Joins 40 Metropolitan areas and States in Adopting Meat-Totally free Monay
NYC’s Major Restaurant Eleven Madison Park Goes Plant-Primarily based
NYC Community Universities Now Serve Vegan Foods to 930,000 Pupils Every single Friday