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

Former New York Town vegan cafe Pure Food stuff and Wine—which is showcased in Netflix’s new docuseries Terrible Vegan—is bringing the eatery’s most popular dishes back to NYC supporters a person very last time. Netflix teamed up with delivery app Postmates and two former Pure Meals and Wine cooks to present a a few-training course meal for totally free until finally March 27. 

The Netflix pop-up, named “The Undesirable Vegan Kitchen,” features a few primary Pure Foodstuff and Wine dishes: the Caesar salad, the Signature Uncooked Lasagna, and Mallomars for dessert. Pure Food and Wine previous 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 extensive. NYC locals can position an order as a result of the Postmates shipping app whenever in the course of lunch or dinner for the future a few days—for absolutely free, such as no cost delivery—while materials final.

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 Food and Wine, a famed raw vegan restaurant in NYC that attracted superstar diners such as Alec Baldwin and Owen Wilson. The restaurant was forced to near in 2015 just after Melngailis was caught in a criminal scheme that concerned fraud, grand larceny, and violations of labor legislation. 

Lousy Vegan’s surprising story

It all started off when Melngailis fulfilled and married conman Anthony Strangis (who called himself Shane Fox). She alleged that he coerced her into thieving revenue from her have cafe and afterwards likely on the operate from authorities. 

About the program of two years, Melngailis wired neary $2 million to Strangis, who promised to fork out off her money owed and make her dog, Leon, immortal. Strangis ultimately took command of the restaurant when he and Melngailis traveled close to Europe. During this time, Pure Food and Wine stopped having to pay employees, who walked out in protest. Strangis was discovered to have expended the restaurant’s funds on gambling, touring, and searching. 

A pizza get put at Domino’s led federal authorities to a Tennessee lodge room wherever the duo was finally arrested with a litany of rates. It was also afterwards identified that Strangis took practically $450,000 from Melngailis’s mother, a criminal offense he was in no way charged for. Strangis finally expended approximately a calendar year in Rikers Island jail in New York when the authorized proceedings took position, and was then placed on probation. For her involvement, Melngailis pled guilty to fees of grand larceny, criminal tax fraud, and a scheme to defraud in exchange for five years’ probation. She also served four months guiding bars during the summer time of 2017. 

Netflix

What transpired to Pure Food items and Wine’s workforce?

When the Netflix documentary portrays the tale as 1 of manipulation, viewers are still left questioning what basically took place, and who was at fault. The primary Pure Food stuff and Wine cafe has been sitting down empty given that it closed in 2015, and its employees had been still left unpaid and without having positions.

“The good people who’d worked at the company back then were suitable to be devastated and indignant,” Melngailis wrote on her blog. “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 claimed that of training course I had a decision. I get that.”

Even so, Melngailis claims she arranged for producers to shell out her in exchange for the supply products she provided for the Netflix documentary. She claims that money went straight to her former employees—who sued her for unpaid wages—for the full amount they ended up owed immediately after she fled in 2015, and that the Netflix producers compensated an lawyer on her behalf who then wired entire payment right to the legal professional symbolizing the personnel.

“Of all the harm and the a lot of debts resulting from my downfall, this part weighed heaviest,” Melngailis wrote. “I was relieved as soon as this payment went by means of, but that was just a smaller section of what remains superb. I want to be clear that I’ll continue to keep doing the job in the direction of addressing it all—one way or another—eventually.”

For extra vegan information in NYC, examine:
NYC Joins 40 Metropolitan areas and States in Adopting a Meat-Free of charge Holiday getaway
NYC is 1 Stage Nearer to Having a Vegan Mayor
NYC’s Prime Cafe Eleven Madison Park Goes Plant-Primarily based

Nicole Axworthy is the News Editor at VegNews and creator of the cookbook Do it yourself Vegan.