Netflix series 'Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.' explores cult brainwashing from A-list restaurant that was 'ahead of its time'

A celebrity-favourite vegan restaurant, flirting with Alec Baldwin, Domino’s Pizza and a cult-like entity that can make your dog immortal are just a few puzzle pieces in the new Netflix documentary series Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. on a woman dubbed the “vegan Bernie Madoff”, Sarma Melngailis.

From Chris Smith, executive producer of Tiger King and director of Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened, this gripping four-part series takes you on the wild ride that landed Melngailis, a high-profile restaurateur of Pure Food and Wine, in the Rikers Island jail.

Back in the 2000s and into the 2010s, celebrities like Owen Wilson, Woody Harrelson, Gisele Bündchen and Tom Brady, among others, flocked to New York City vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine, with a pretty famous lasagna on their menu, and Melngailis and her then-boyfriend and business partner, chef Matthew Kenney, at the helm.

Many called the restaurant “ahead of its time” and, as chef Nikki King Bennett describes in the documentary, made eating vegan “sexy as opposed to hippie.”

When Melngailis and Kenney broke up, Jeffrey Chodorow, their backer for the restaurant, decided to stick with Melngailis, trusting her good “business head” to continue to run Pure Food and Wine without Kenney, effectively selling her the restaurant but leaving her with US$2 million in debt.

Melngailis started chatting with Pure Food and Wine patron Alec Baldwin at the restaurant, which then extended to phone calls and emails.

“Like a lot of the gentlemen who went there, he had a bit of a crush on Sarma,” Vanity Fair journalist Allen Salkin, who wrote a thorough piece for the magazine on Melngailis’ case in 2016, says in the Netflix series.

“When Alec was talking to her about wanting to have somebody important in his life, she would, instead of offering herself as that potential person, suggest that maybe he should adopt a dog.”

While finding dogs available for adoption online to send to Baldwin, Melngailis found an American Pit Bull Terrier mix she adopted, calling him Leon.

Ultimately, time ran out on Baldwin, who ended up meeting his now-wife, Hilaria at Pure Food and Wine.

Melngailis admits she feels, “a little bit of regret” that she “had never gone any farther with Alec.”

That’s when Melngailis started talking to Shane Fox online, who had been engaging with Baldwin on Twitter and lived in Massachusetts. When Fox came to New York City to meet Melngailis in person, he was very mysterious about what he did for work, saying that it was some sort of “black ops” stuff, all while he wore a Rolex, owned a number of diamonds and could be seen in a Bentley.

“I just remember feeling like he understood me, which meant a lot,” Melngailis says.

“I feel like he understood I was trying to grow this business and this brand that I believed in with all my heart was everything to me… It was hard to push that away.”

Then, like we see in many similar stories, he started asking her to wire transfer him money, with the documentary series positioning Melngailis as a very generous person, who always wants to help people in need.

Additionally, Melngailis discovers that Shane Fox isn’t actually his real name, it’s actually Anthony Strangis.

“I think I was alarmed at first and then he explained to me that he [had] various identities and had multiple identities based on whatever he did,” Melngailis says in the series.

This culminates with the pair getting married after Strangis aka Shane Fox said he could pay off Melngailis’ US$2 million of debt for Pure Food and Wine. Melngailis didn’t tell any of her friends or family until the ceremony was over.

'He’s something more than human and I am a mere human'

At this point, Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. starts to reveal cult-like messaging that Anthony Strangis was disseminating to Sarma Melngailis, like a sort of brainwashing.

Journalist Allen Salkin explains that Strangis would tell Melngailis that in his past life “an earlier version of Leon was his dog” to make it seem like they were on this “march through time” together.

Strangis referred to Melngailis as "TBH" meaning “tiny blonde human.”

“The implication being that he’s not human, he’s something other than human, he’s something more than human and I am a mere human,” Melngailis explains in the docuseries. “He has chosen me and now I should feel grateful.”

“I don’t remember there being this moment that I crossed some threshold where now all of a sudden I believe something, and there wasn’t any point in time where he came and sort of presented me with this crazy story, and I decided to believe it. Everything was so gradual.”

Ultimately, Strangis told his wife that if she did as he said, this series of tests, which mostly just involved Melngailis transferring money to him upon request, she and her dog could become immortal. These tests and the process was dictated by what Strangis called the “family.”

“The family are this overarching kind of group of judges who are watching your every move and are deciding, have you completed the tasks necessary, proven yourself to be in perfect alignment with what their goals are, for you to pass through into this new state of being where you become this super power,” Salkin explains.

“I think that Anthony understood that it was all bullshit but then, he was probably also in love with the world he created.”

As the money adds up, Melngailis pushes back on why Strangis needs all this money but ultimately, she obeys the orders, even "borrowing" money from people close to her to give to him.

That led to employees at Pure Food and Wine, and a subsequent business Melngailis opened One Lucky Duck, not getting paid, resulting in a walkout followed by a publicized protest outside the restaurant.

Caught by Domino's pizza

As the story starts to come to an end, Sarma Melngailis and Anthony Strangis fled to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, in 2016, specifically at a motel near Dollywood.

Eventually, some investors in Melngailis’ business contacted authorities and a warrant was issued against the couple. The local police department in Tennessee was able to track them down because a pizza and chicken wings from Domino’s Pizza were purchased on Strangis’ credit card, leading to their arrests.

By the time Melngailis fought her case for a year, Strangis was released before she served her three-and-a-half-month sentence in Rikers Island jail. The total collateral damage totalled US$6 million.

At the end of the series, Vanity Fair journalist Allen Salkin said he was looking into the Patty Hearst case and its parallels to Melngailis’ story, which connects to the real debate in the ex-restauranteur's case.

“[Hearst] robs a bank in Berkeley, California and the debate was, should Patty Hearst be found guilty of armed robbery because there’s a great picture of her on a security camera holding a machine gun at a bank,” Salkin explains in the docuseries. “This was a girl from the utmost privilege who had been brainwashed by a cult of revolutionaries, or was she? Or had she become a real revolutionary?”

“If Sarma was brainwashed should she be found guilty of those things that she did, or shouldn’t she?... If she married [Anthony Strangis] and he paid back her debts,… what if in fact Sarma thought she was running a scam on him originally?… You could tell that story.”