Celebrities worshipped her and fine diners adored her food... but “Vegan Queen” Sarma Melngailis threw it all away with a barking-mad bid to make her pooch immortal.
Melngailis was the brains and the beauty behind swanky New York restaurant Pure Food and Wine.
The star-studded guestbook read like an A-listers Who’s Who – Woody Harrelson, Stevie Wonder, Darryl Hannah, Anne Hathaway, Owen Wilson... even ex-US President Bill Clinton. But Melngailis was to be undone by love. And gullibility.
She became the Vegan Fugitive after stealing from the business to bankroll her husband’s crackpot claim that he could make her pitbull Leon live for ever.
They went on the run for 10 months but were caught in a Tennessee motel after ordering a Domino’s cheesy pizza – with a side of chicken wings.
The stranger-than-fiction saga is unpicked in new Netflix series Bad Vegan, starting on Monday. From the makers of hit show Tiger King, it charts how Ivy League educated Melngailis’ world imploded.
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The story is from her viewpoint, with claims Anthony Strangis controlled her life.
His attorney denied all of her accusations in court.
Melngailis started draining funds when Strangis promised he could grow her food empire and guarantee pet Leon eternity.
Between them, they were accused of taking $2million from the company and staff.
An indictment alleged that, in 12 months, Strangis spent more than $1million at casinos, withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars, spent $80,000 on watches and another $70,000 on trips to Europe.
Melngailis’s friend , the novelist Porochista Khakpour, said it all came down to the dog. “Melngailis lost her mind,” she said. “She really believed that her dog would live for ever.
Melngailis gained attention when she appeared on the cover of a cookbook she wrote with then-boyfriend, chef Matthew Kenney, in 2005.
Pure Food and Wine restaurant had opened a year earlier in Manhattan.
Cocktails included the Master Cleanse Tini, an organic saké served in a martini glass rimmed with crystal date sugar.
Dishes were made from a range of cultured nut cheeses. It had more than 200 customers a night and annual profits of $500,000.
They often posed for pics with stars – one showing them with Harrelson and Sex and the City’s Jason Lewis.
Pure is rumoured to have inspired the SATC episode where Jason’s character Smith Jerrod meets Samantha Jones at the restaurant he’s working at, Raw.
Melngailis, now 49, and Kenney, 57, split both personally and professionally a year later. She kept the restaurant and Kenney went on to launch his own California-based lifestyle company, Matthew Kenney Cuisine, which opened its first London restaurant last year.
Meanwhile Melngailis and Pure Food and Wine vowed to spearhead a raw-vegan movement, opening juice bars and selling branded snacks. But the strain began to show.
She wrote on her blog in 2007: “These people would all probably choke on their flax crackers if they knew that not only am I walking around often feeling entirely spent, weary and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but that I’m also carrying a few hundred thousand dollars of personal debt, I’m full of burning rage to build this empire with a residual and occasionally reappearing destructive closet eating disorder.”
Following another break-up, Melngailis adopted Leon from a rescue centre in Brooklyn.
Friends say she threw herself into work. But by 2011, she was ready to date again and met Strangis after he wooed her online under his real name, Shane Fox.
In the four-part Netflix documentary, it is claimed he promised vast rewards if she funnelled her restaurant’s funds to him.
In court, Strangis refuted the claims and said his wife was a willing participant. He appears to have disappeared from the public eye since the scandal. Instructions Strangis had served time for grand theft and impersonating a policeman, both in 2005.
According to Melngailis’s legal team, Strangis told her Leon had been his dog in a previous life and the three of them had all been living together for a thousand years.
Melngailis herself said: “Among the things I’d be granted, Leon would also be immortal and safe to be by my side for eternity.”
In a taped phone call, obtained by Netflix, Melngailis is heard saying: “So I’m just supposed to do whatever you say and listen to your instructions?”
Strangis, who was brought on board as a manager at the restaurant in 2013, replied: “You signed on to this. You told me you wanted happily ever after. If I tell you to take all your money out of the bank and light it on fire, do it.”
By 2015, Pure Food and Wine had collapsed. Melngailis transferred more than $1.6million from the business to her personal account and staff had walked out over alleged unpaid wages.
After going on the run, Melngailis and Strangis were eventually found hiding at a Tennessee motel. They were caught after ordering the pizza under his real name, Fox.
In 2017 they were charged with 24 counts related to fraud and unpaid taxes and wages. Melngailis pleaded guilty to stealing more than $200,000 from an investor and scheming to defraud, as well as criminal tax fraud charges.
She served three months in New York’s notorious Rikers Island prison and was ordered to repay $1.5million in restitution payments.
Strangis pleaded guilty to four counts of grand larceny and was jailed for a year, with five years on probation – and ordered to repay $840,000.
In court, his state-appointed attorney, Samuel Karliner, denied claims that Strangis was a gambling addict who used cult-like methods to control his wife, including gaslighting, sleep deprivation and sex humiliation.
Speaking to the New York Post from prison, where she still tried to maintain her vegan diet, Melngailis said: “It’s the worst nightmare. If I had terminal cancer, it would be better than this, because at least then I did not cause it. I love my workers. When I come out, I will find something to do and pay it back.”
Melngailis still hopes to revive her restaurant business. She now lives in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood. With pitbull Leon, of course.
