'Bad Vegan': How the queen of vegan cooking that made Alec Baldwin fall in love, ended up jailed for fraud

Productions based on true stories are all the rage. After the success of The Tinder Scammer, comes Bad Vegan, the four-episode docuseries that tells the story of Sarma Melngailis, the woman owner of the restaurant “Pure Food and Wine” and her dramatic situation. In the first person he tells his version of events and how he ended up in prison.

Sarma Melngailis and her partner of that time, chef Matthew Kenney, put into operation the vegan restaurant named “Pure Food and Wine”. In a short time it became the place chosen by the stars. Owen Wilson, Tom Brady and Chelsea Clinton were habitants of the place, as was Alec Baldwin. The business interfered with the relationship of Sarma and Matthew who decided to separate. The restaurant was left to Sarma who went ahead with the business. Baldwin began a flirtation with her (he even used his own social networks to say that he was in love with her) but the bond did not go beyond that.

Sarma was depressed by her recent separation and Alec suggested that she adopt a dog. That's where Leon, the pit bull who will become the central star of Sarma's life, comes into action. But something very serious was going to happen. Through Twitter, a man appeared to send him messages and also to write to Baldwin who responded to him and even made jokes with each other. Baldwin had already met his current wife, Hilaria Thomas, at Sarma's restaurant and the relationship was going from strength to strength. In fact Hilaria also interacted on twitter with this mysterious man who would become Sarma's nightmare.

Sarma's curiosity was better and they decided to meet in person. The man named Anthony Strangis would become the ruin of his business and his life. The deceptions began to happen one after another. The lies were covered with bigger ones and Sarma, innocently, believed each of her arguments, who had even convinced her that she could make Leon, her dog, immortal. The man dominated her in his feelings and also used techniques typical of a strange cult to keep her under control. “I don't know how it got mixed up with Anthony,” said Strangis's stepmother, Ellie Strangis. “A woman like her, what did you see in Anthony?”

That was the question that the whole circle of Sarma and its employees asked themselves and no one could find an adequate answer.

So with this ridiculous and bizarre idea of the immortality of her pet (“She really believed that her dog would live forever” says the novelist Porochista Khakpour, a friend of this woman), Sarma entered a nefarious circuit where she began to get into debt every time since her partner asked her for money for various activities.

Covered with debts, in 2015 he had to close his restaurant and ran away with Anthony leaving behind an immense debt to the treasury and his employees. The debt is estimated to be between $844,000 owed to investors and the debt of $40,000 in the salaries you did not pay to the restaurant employees.

While the time they were on the run and the police could not find them, both made a mistake that was unforgivable for veganism followers. The couple ordered a pizza (later Sarma claimed that it was not her who ordered it but Anthony) and the police turned on the radars and found them.

The story starts with the words and testimony of this woman who, after going through prison, tries to recover her life and regrets the relationship full of lies she lived with Anthony. He tries to put in the focus of the discussion how a woman with a secure future like Sarma, an intelligent and university woman fell prey to this web of madness. Known from this as the “vegan Bernie Madoff”, Sarma will not be able to regain the status and respect she had hard-earned with her restaurant.

The docuseries are directed by Chris Smith and the executive producer is Ryann Fraser. When Smith was asked if he could talk to Strangis, he said, “We tried. It was really hard to find. Through one person, they gave us an encrypted email address, so we wrote to him with an offer to participate and he never responded.”

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