About ME
(This summary below was written in 2019. I’ve not yet updated it since Bad Vegan was released in March 2022. It’s now June. A lot has happened. At some point I’ll update this. For now, I’ve just created a Patreon page.)
2019
Trying to write this page here has been a lot harder than one might imagine. Who am I? What previously identified me in a way that made me proud is gone: A restaurant and a brand. It was a company full of really good people of which I was in charge. The restaurant was Pure Food and Wine, and the brand was One Lucky Duck. I was so committed to the brand that as soon as the logo was developed, in early 2005, I went and got that logo tattooed on my arm.
Everything about that restaurant and brand was about inspiring people to shift toward a healthier lifestyle; toward living in a way that involved consuming less animals and more plants. I wanted to make things better – for people, animals, and the planet – not just in small ways, but in big ways too. I was so determined. We were doing well at it.
For reasons I will attempt to explain at some point (once I sort them out myself), that business is gone. It did not cease to exist for any of the usual reasons—it was growing year after year and profitable. Instead something happened that was disturbing, tragic, mind-bending, and excruciating. And then, in 2015, I disappeared for nearly a year, which was also excruciating, and surreal. One day I was arrested, which is what finally brought me back home—or to the city that is my home. It was only at this point that I found out it was all gone, and in fact I no longer had a home. I was charged with a bunch of crimes and eventually, unable to withstand a lengthy and costly trial, I stood and pled guilty to those crimes and then spent four months—the summer of 2017—at NYC’s Rikers Island jail. So… what happened? Good question. I’m in the process of sorting it out. What was written in the press is mostly either inaccurate or only a small bit of the overall story. It’s quite a story.
What remains of my previous life is two books: I co-authored Raw Food Real World (Harper Collins, 2005), and authored of Living Raw Food (Harper Collins, 2009). Anytime someone tells me how one or the other (or both) of those books changed their lives or helped them in some way, I’m gratified to my core. At least there is some lasting impact. I’m working on another book, but this one will be very different.
The website for my company, which no longer exists, had included my own personal blog. Via the grace and generosity of a friend, those blog posts were retrieved and resurrected, and this site constructed so that I could re-post some of those blogs, and write and post new ones. It makes me feel like I’m getting a tiny piece of myself back. I had always loved being connected to people in this way and I’ve missed it. Hello again. Sadly, all of the many thoughtful comments on those older posts are unable to be retrieved, but I had appreciated them all. New ones are welcome.
The rest of my bio hardly seems relevant, but: I grew up in Newton, MA, graduated in 1994 from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School and a B.A. in Economics from the College of Arts and Sciences, then went to work in investment banking at Bear Stearns, then private equity at Bain Capital, and then at a high-yield investment fund before I finally realized I didn’t much care for the world of finance and left to get a degree from the French Culinary Institute, thus beginning my life in the world of food. A few years later I stumbled into the world of raw vegan food, and decided, with a partner, to open Pure Food and Wine. A more detailed version of this story can be found in the intro pages of my second book, Living Raw Food. My initial transition from eating just about anything and everything to eating only raw vegan food is chronicled in Raw Food Real World.
I hope to be able to turn things right side up again. In the meantime, here you will find things I wrote in the past and things I write now. I live in Harlem with my rescue dog, Leon.
Sarma Melngailis
May, 2019
