Netflix Just Opened a ‘Bad Vegan’ Pure Foodstuff & Wine Pop-Up Restaurant

Previous New York Town vegan cafe Pure Food and Wine—which is highlighted in Netflix’s new docuseries Terrible Vegan—is bringing the eatery’s most well known dishes again to NYC enthusiasts 1 previous time. Netflix teamed up with supply app Postmates and two previous Pure Food and Wine chefs to offer you a three-class food for absolutely free right until March 27. 

The Netflix pop-up, referred to as “The Lousy Vegan Kitchen,” delivers 3 initial Pure Meals and Wine dishes: the Caesar salad, the Signature Raw Lasagna, and Mallomars for dessert. Pure Food and Wine previous head chef Nikki King Bennet and previous pastry chef Missy Maidana are cooking the meals in a ghost kitchen in NYC’s Reduce East Side all weekend lengthy. NYC locals can position an buy by way of the Postmates shipping app anytime throughout lunch or evening meal for the upcoming three days—for cost-free, including free of charge delivery—while provides past.

Postmates

Poor Vegan premiered on Netflix on March 16 as a four-episode documentary that chronicles the downfall of Sarma Melngailis, co-founder of Pure Foodstuff and Wine, a famed uncooked vegan cafe in NYC that captivated movie star diners this sort of as Alec Baldwin and Owen Wilson. The restaurant was pressured to near in 2015 right after Melngailis was caught in a prison scheme that associated fraud, grand larceny, and violations of labor legislation. 

Bad Vegan’s shocking story

It all started when Melngailis met and married conman Anthony Strangis (who known as himself Shane Fox). She alleged that he coerced her into stealing funds from her very own restaurant and afterwards going on the run from authorities. 

Over the program of two a long time, Melngailis wired neary $2 million to Strangis, who promised to shell out off her debts and make her pet, Leon, immortal. Strangis sooner or later took control of the restaurant while he and Melngailis traveled all over Europe. During this time, Pure Foods and Wine stopped spending employees, who walked out in protest. Strangis was located to have used the restaurant’s funds on gambling, traveling, and shopping. 

A pizza buy placed at Domino’s led federal authorities to a Tennessee lodge home wherever the duo was in the long run arrested with a litany of expenses. It was also later on observed that Strangis took just about $450,000 from Melngailis’s mom, a criminal offense he was under no circumstances billed for. Strangis ultimately invested virtually a yr in Rikers Island jail in New York whilst the lawful proceedings took position, and was then placed on probation. For her involvement, Melngailis pled guilty to fees of grand larceny, legal tax fraud, and a scheme to defraud in trade for 5 years’ probation. She also served four months behind bars during the summer time of 2017. 

Netflix

What transpired to Pure Foodstuff and Wine’s workers?

Whilst the Netflix documentary portrays the story as just one of manipulation, viewers are still left questioning what basically happened, and who was at fault. The unique Pure Foods and Wine cafe has been sitting down vacant considering that it shut in 2015, and its staff members were being remaining unpaid and without having employment.

“The great men and women who’d labored at the enterprise again then had been proper to be devastated and offended,” Melngailis wrote on her web site. “It was as if I’d abandoned them, which in result I did. There was no precise gun to my head so it will be mentioned that of program I had a option. I get that.”

Nonetheless, Melngailis claims she arranged for producers to fork out her in trade for the supply products she furnished for the Netflix documentary. She statements that money went straight to her former employees—who sued her for unpaid wages—for the complete amount of money they were being owed after she fled in 2015, and that the Netflix producers paid out an attorney on her behalf who then wired total payment immediately to the lawyer symbolizing the employees.

“Of all the harm and the a lot of debts ensuing from my downfall, this part weighed heaviest,” Melngailis wrote. “I was relieved after this payment went via, but that was just a tiny aspect of what remains excellent. I want to be crystal clear that I’ll continue to keep operating to addressing it all—one way or another—eventually.”

For much more vegan news in NYC, examine:
NYC Joins 40 Cities and States in Adopting a Meat-Free Vacation
NYC is Just one Phase Closer to Acquiring a Vegan Mayor
NYC’s Leading Restaurant Eleven Madison Park Goes Plant-Based