Sarma Melngailis’ controversial tale has all the spice and drama you need. Here’s this vegan and raw food girl boss at the culinary frontier in the 2000s. She owns the successful avant-garde restaurant Pure Food and Wine, has celebrity patrons and she’s a great boss!
But when a man walks in promising to be the love of her life and teach her how existence really works, it all goes wrong and you can’t help but wonder how and why.
Bad Vegan is one of Netflix’s better, more somber documentaries that doesn’t glamourize the story. It is primarily narrated by Sarma Melngailis, her family members, her employees, and journalist Allen Salkin.
In all irony, it would be a greasy pizza delivery order that would ultimately get Sarma into jail. It’s safe to say that at the time of her arrest, media outlets and the general public ate the vegan queen alive. Which brings us to the question…
Is Bad Vegan worth watching?
The short answer is yes.
For the long answer, let’s start with the fact that it’s easily digestible thanks to director Chris Smith’s (from Tiger King and FYRE) approach and cinematography. The tale itself is bizarre, but the storytelling carries it in the way that the viewer can make sense of what and how things happened and perhaps even why.
The documentary’s main selling point was this Manhattan elite restaurateur who was brainwashed with the promise of immortality for her dog and herself.
But watching a calm, collected and pragmatic Sarma, as the “protagonist,” narrate these events is quite a compelling juxtaposition. My favorite bit is how Sarma (now) is entirely aware of how ridiculous the scam sounds and yet, tries in vain to explain her decisions.
It makes you wonder if Shane was playing a con on Sarma, or if it was the other way round and it all went wrong.
Of course, there are quite a few hot takes on how we see only one side of the story, which is Sarma’s. (Shane Fox was welcomed to tell his tale, but he didn’t.) But Sarma’s side is the one that provokes a range of emotions.
The more you watch, the more you want to place yourself in Sarma’s shoes and figure if you would be gullible enough to be conned out of millions of dollars.
As much as we’d all like to say no, many of the promises that Shane makes to Sarma are the ones we want dearly: professional success, eternal love, immortality for our loved ones, a happy ending, and the space to forget about worldly problems.
But the most poignant moments are the ones that deal with the topics of gaslighting, bad parenting and psychological conditions that enabled this incident in the first place.
You will finish Bad Vegan with more questions than answers, and to be honest, that’s a good thing.
About Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.
Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. is a 2022 Netflix docuseries by director Chris Smith.
The series tells the story of how vegan restaurateur Sarma Melngailis, former owner of the New York City vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine, illegally transferred money to her husband so he could pay a deity to bestow immortality upon them.
Sarma met and married conman Anthony Strangis (who called himself Shane Fox), and she alleged that he coerced her into stealing money from her own restaurant and later going on the run from authorities. The pair were ultimately charged with transferring over $1.6 million from the restaurant into their personal accounts.
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