Pure Food and Wine’s rise and fall

Melngailis opened Pure Food and Wine together with her then-boyfriend Matthew Kenney and Jeffrey Chodorow, the owner of China Grill Management, in 2004 as New York City’s first upscale raw vegan restaurant. The restaurant was listed in Forbes’ All-Star New York Eateries five years in a row.

The next year, the trio opened One Lucky Duck Juice and Takeaway, a retail store attached to Pure Food and Wine. Melngailis split professionally and personally with Kenney a few years later.

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In 2011, Melngailis discovered her now former husband Anthony Strangis, a junk-food-loving gambler with a criminal past, in Alec Baldwin’s Twitter mentions. That’s when things began to go downhill. The New York Times reported that between 2011 and 2016, Melngailis defrauded investors of more than US$2 million. In 2015, both the ventures were permanently shut down when the scandal came to light and her staff walked out en masse. According to the authorities, the couple had failed to pay US$400,000 in sales tax, investors were out of pocket US$844,000, and employees were owed US$40,000 in unpaid wages.

A love story gone sour

In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Melngailis claimed her collapse was due to a spell Strangis cast. She said that Strangis, who she eventually came to realise was a con artist, resorted to cultlike techniques, including gaslighting, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation, to make her dreams (which include turning her dog Leon immortal) come true.

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Apparently, she gave him all he asked for – her cash and passwords to her bank accounts. And since Strangis held a “Svengali-like” hold on her, Melngailis gave Strangis more than US$1.6 million. According to the indictment, Strangis spent $1.2 million of the $1.6 million at Connecticut casinos. The rest of the money, the prosecutors say, the couple spent on watches and lavish trips. Then, when the money ran out, the couple ran away.

Putting her life back together

Melngailis ran a profitable restaurant for 11 years, wrote cookbooks (Raw Food Real World and Living Raw Food) and rubbed shoulders with celebrities. But now, she spends most of her time reading, hanging out with her dog, working on a memoir and recording podcasts.

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On being asked if she’s ever going to open a restaurant or store again, she told Vanity Fair, “I have moved around and have had to rely a lot on friends, but very much want to have my own New York City home base again for just Leon and me. Some days I’m inspired and fired up to get sh*t done. Other days I’m exhausted and feel unable to handle anything. So, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just hide away with Leon and write books. Or fly to the borders of Ukraine and help make Molotov cocktails. Something useful.”