Sarma Melngailis' former employees are just as shocked about what they saw inBad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.
“I was just blown away,” said Joey Repice, former beverage director for the restaurant for over 10 years. “The money that just kept flying out, the transfers that just kept happening…'
For Jim Switzer, former operations manager, the most surprising part wasn’t Melngailis stealing, but her lack of compassion while doing it. “There were over 100 employees there and before they lost their jobs, they didn’t get paid,” Switzer explained. “And I didn’t think that Sarma really showed any empathy for that”
“One thing that was a surprise for me was finding out that Michael Cordelano, who Sarma introduced me to as an investor, was actually Anthony,” revealed Nikkie Bennett, former executive chef of the restaurant.
“You never really know what another person’s going through no matter how well you think you know them,” said former restaurant manager Bonnie Crocker.
Netflix
Bennett explained her shock with what happened didn’t diminish the positive experience of working there. “We had a great environment in the kitchen,” she said. “We loved each other, we really created a family.”
“We all have our good memories, but we’ll never have those garden nights again,” said Crocker. “It feels like a death in a way.”
Melngailis opened Pure Food and Wine in 2005.Attracting A-listersranging from Bill Clinton to Stevie Wonder, the restaurant — deemed the first upscale vegan experience — won acclaim as “the top raw vegan restaurant in the world.”
But its success floundered after Melngailis became romantically involved and eventually married Strangis — a convict from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, with prior arrests for grand theft and for impersonating a police officer. The documentary suggests Strangis manipulated Melngailis into draining her restaurant’s funds and funneling the money to his bank account so he could, as the the show’sdescriptionsays, “make her dreams a reality.”
The two left New York amid walk-outs from their employees over unpaid wages. Police filings from investors led to their arrest months later in May 2016 (the two were famously caught after ordering a non-vegan Dominos pizza to the Tennessee motel room where they were hiding out).
Both served jail time after pleading guilty to grand larceny, tax fraud, and conspiring to defraud.
Pure Food and Wine staffers also shared in the Netflix video what they’ve been up to since the vegan hotspot’s closing.
Repice’s passions shifted from beverage to hot sauce, the entrepreneur launchingJoey’s Hot Sauce, his own roasted pepper condiment. Crocker’s ambitions also transformed. She is now a funeral coordinator, a bereavement minister, and a grief counselor working out of California.
Saez-Vega, now a manager of a restaurant in Harlem, said in the clip he’s learned to prioritize his life outside of work, focusing on “family, travel and just being present in the now.”
The same can be said about Ross who is in a “lovely phase” in his life, living happily married in Denver, trying to have a family.
Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. is streaming on Netflix now.
source: people.com
