Netflix's new film "Bad Vegan" is a true-life drama about the downfall of New York City's most beloved eatery. The story follows Sarma Melngailis, owner of the vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine and the related raw vegan product brand One Lucky Duck, until Melngailis meets and marries con man Anthony Stranges. The two were eventually charged with transferring more than $1.6 million from the restaurant to their personal accounts.

In a four-part documentary, the sensational story of Pure Food & Wine's demise is told by Melngailis himself and several former employees. Both former owners and employees describe the pre-Strangis restaurant as a special place to work, and fans now wonder if the restaurant could ever make a comeback. Here is what we know about this famous vegan cafe.

The raw vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine was founded in 2004 as a collaboration between Melngailis and then-boyfriend and chef Matthew Kenney; in 2005, Melngailis bought Kenney's shares and began running the restaurant himself. In 2005, Melngailis purchased Kenny's shares and began running the restaurant himself. The Gramercy-based restaurant has garnered a loyal clientele that includes celebrities such as Anne Hathaway, Owen Wilson, and Alec Baldwin, who repeatedly uses the Bad Vegan name, who met his wife Hilaria at the restaurant in 2011.

According to Grub Street (opens in new tab), the restaurant became known as "Vegan Glamorous" in the days before Impossible Burgers and plant-based foods. Popular menu items included spicy Thai lettuce wraps, zebra tomato and zucchini lasagna with pistachio and basil pesto, and the Master Cleanse Tini (organic sake with lemon juice, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper). When Melngailis was at the helm, there was a strong sense of loyalty among the employees, with one employee recalling in the documentary that he called her "Sal Mama."

Melngailis had begun to build an empire by the time she met Stranges. She had written two cookbooks, Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow (co-authored with Kenny) in 2005 and Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with More Recipes from 2009 Pure Food and Wine" was published. He also opened three juice and take-out bars called "One Lucky Duck" and carved a duck logo on his arm.

When restaurateurs met Strangis in 2011, Pure Food and Wine was profitable, but she still had a large loan with Chodorow. She then gave the money to a con artist and began taking the "cosmic endurance test" described in Bad Vegan. Strangis also began to lose herself in the day-to-day operations of the restaurant, as described in the documentary, which worried the staff.

Melngailis and Strangis began missing payroll in 2014, and according to the New York Post (opens in new tab), employees did not receive checks five times that year. Pure Food and Wine temporarily closed in the winter of 2015 after servers, bartenders, and kitchen staff walked out in protest of unpaid salaries. It then reopened briefly with new investors before closing permanently in the spring of 2016.

Melngailis eventually pleaded guilty to stealing $1 million from the restaurant; according to Vanity Fair (opens in new tab), Melngailis owed approximately $63,000 to employees in addition to repaying investors. The former owner used the money paid for Bud Vegan for back pay, and the outlet received restitution and confirmed that most of it had been paid.

"In exchange for agreeing to turn over the materials and images to the documentary's creator, a payment was made directly to my attorney on my behalf in March of 2020, bypassing me entirely. 'I wanted to pay, whether in the form of a judgment or not. "

While the possibility of a future restaurant run by Melngailis is still up in the air, Bad Vegan fans will have a chance to sample dishes by two former Pure Food and Wine chefs. A three-course meal from the Bad Vegan Kitchen (open in new tab) (by former head chef Nikki Bennett and former pastry chef Missy Maydana) can be ordered at Postmates for the weekend of March 25-27. It includes a Caesar salad appetizer, a main course of raw lasagna, and a dessert malomar, all original to the restaurant.