(Mild spoilers for Netflix’s Bad Vegan will be found below.)
Tales of grifters rule the streaming services these days, from Amanda Seyfried’s turn as Theranos’ mega-frauder Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout to Julia Garner’s take on super-shady Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna. There’s another similar limited series (called Bad Vegan from Netflix) on the horizon, but this one involves a truly talented and hard-working individual who fell from grace, big time.
That would be Sarma Melngailis, the restauranteur and founder of One Lucky Duck and Pure Food and Wine, which were all the rage in New York City. The joints specialized in raw vegan cuisine was all the rage with celebrities, and then in 2016, everything fell completely to pieces. As Bad Vegan details, this wasn’t an overnight process, but the spectacle seemed to explode all over the gossip scene. In 2016, New York Post sensationally wrote about “the downfall of NYC’s hottest vegan” while attorneys that represented Sarma’s defrauded employees called her “the vegan Bernie Madoff.”
When all was said and done, Sarma did hard time at Rikers Island. She had ended up in an awful relationship with a compulsive gambler and terrible person named Anthony Strangis (who used a pseudonym). Long story short, there was a cult-like mentality involved with this coupling. There were promises of dog immortality and references to a “meat suit,” and the two ended up on the lam and in the hole for millions of dollars. The series follows Sarma’s experiences, which are at times unbelievable, and reactions to those who knew her, both in positive and negative ways, to dramatic effect.
The show hails from executive producer Chris Smith of Tiger King and Fyre: The Greatest Party, so get ready for drama.
Bad Vegan will stream on March 16.
