Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bad Vegan’ On Netflix, Where Sarma Melngailis Discusses How She Defrauded Her Employees And Became A Fugitive

Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives., directed by Chris Smith (Tiger King, Fyre), is a 4-part docuseries about how Sarma Melngailis ran one of the hottest restaurants in New York, a raw-food vegan place called Pure Food and Wine, for years, but ended up defrauding her employees and running from law enforcement. Melngailis is the star of the docuseries, as she’s front and center, as is her restaurant “family” and actual family. But does that give a balanced view?

BAD VEGAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Audio of a phone call between Sarma Melngailis and Shane Fox about the very docuseries that we’re watching. Suffice to say, Fox isn’t happy about the prospect, given all the f-bombs he drops during the call.

The Gist: Melngailis is a willing participant in this docuseries, mainly because she wants her side of the story out there. Other major participants are employees of Pure Food and Wine and the website OneLuckyDuck.com, which she also operated. Jeffrey Chodorow, who partnered with Melngailis and her former boyfriend Matthew Kenney to open Pure Food and Wine, is also interviewed, as is Allen Salkin, who wrote about Melngailis for Vanity Fair.

Most of the first episode sets up who Melngailis is, and that under her seemingly perfect, social exterior, she was a very shy person who cared deeply for people and her dog Leone, who she got shortly after breaking up with Kenney. That relationship is what helped launch her in restaurant circles, but when it went south, Chodorow sold Pure Food and Wine to her instead of Kenney because she went to Wharton and had a much better head for business than Kenney, who had a reputation for stiffing employees and vendors.

She basically bought the restaurant’s debt, and she was pretty broke. But she still gave help to those who needed it, including Anthony Caruana, a friend who lived on the street near where she lived. And she didn’t have a great sense of red flags. She met Fox online after she noticed he was regularly corresponding to her friend Alec Baldwin on Twitter. Fox talked about working in a very secretive Black Ops type of company, and he showed signs that he had a lot of money. He even offered to help pay off her debt on the restaurant.

Her father, sister and restaurant family were all charmed by Fox but thought the relationship was strange. Then they find out that his real name was Anthony Strangis, and he was convicted of several crimes in Florida. He came clean to Melngailis, but maintained that he’s changed, and he still has the money to help. So, for financial reasons, the two get married.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Bad Vegan definitely has the sensationalistic vibe of the two most famous docuseries Smith was involved with — Tiger King and Fyre — but because or Melngailis’ extensive involvement, it feels much more personal than the other two.

Our Take: There seems to be a credibility that we associate with Sarma Melngailis while we watch her in Bad Vegan, but that might be because of some very simple reasons: She’s beautiful and smart, and seems to be ready to be culpable for everything she did while she was with Fox. Smith presents her story in a way that makes you want to identify with her and make Fox the enemy. But as we were watching the first episode, we started to feel like there were missing pieces to this story that we felt we really needed.

While we didn’t need chapter and verse on Melngailis’ background, we did want to hear a little bit more about her background and life, as well as her relationship with Kenney. That relationship, as well as her will-they-won’t-they friendship with Baldwin surely informed how she managed to get gaslit by Fox/Strangis, and how she managed to marry him despite all the red flags flying in her face, including the record he had under his real name.

The whole first episode sets Melngailis up to be a good person, smart and ambitious, who might have gotten in over her head with both the restaurant and the relationship with Fox. But, because she’s a willing participant in the docuseries, you wonder if there is something we’re missing.

Yes, we hear about how solitary she can be when she’s not out in the front of the house at Pure Food and Wine, screwing on a smiling face and outgoing personality because she’s the face of the restaurant. But what we don’t find out about, at least not at first, is how that introverted personality contributed to her relationship choices throughout her life. What is the part of her personality that decided to cling to Fox despite all the signs that told her she should break free?

Will we get an idea that Melngailis’ decision to defraud the people she felt was her family was more than just about desperation and falling in with the wrong person? We’re not sure we’re going to get more than a view that sets her more up to be a victim than a perpetrator. Which is ok, because the series is entertaining just leaning on Melngailis’ side of the story. But it would be much better if we got a more complete picture.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Will Richards, an associate of Fox/Strangis, says “I was there to ensure that Sarma didn’t go off the rails.”

Sleeper Star: Allan Salkin (whom, full disclosure, we know via Facebook writing circles) is more or less the only journalist we see in the first episode, but his knowledge of Malngailis’ history and his pursuit of the fraud story was so extensive that his viewpoint is critical to the narrative.

Most Pilot-y Line: The reenactments of Fox’s “black ops” activity are pretty cheesy.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We really wish Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. was less one-sided, but at least the side we see makes for an entertaining story.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.