The Bad Vegan aka Sarma Melngailis was an A-list vegan chef in New York City before embezzling money from her employees and being labeled with the “Vegan Bernie Madoff” nickname. Her dramatic story is being told in the Netflix docuseries Bad Vegan, which chronicles the rise and fall of her upscale restaurants. But before she was eventually found guilty of tax fraud and larceny, Melngailis had a short-lived relationship with since-disgraced comedian Louis C.K.
In Bad Vegan, Melngailis’ relationship with scammer Anthony Strangis is the main plot of the series, though the vegan chef was linked to a few A-list celebs while working at her world-famous restaurants, including Alec Baldwin. One famous ex is none other than Louis C.K., who allegedly gave Melngailis an STD.
Emails released from 2019 reveal that the comedian did give the Melngailis an STD, and when he was called out by the chef he gave a bizarre response involving glass penises:
hey. I understand you’re upset. This kind of s**t is tough. I never swore that I was clean. I told you I may or may not have given this to you. I’m sorry if I did. If you gave it to me, it’s okay. We all share the current human bloodstream, which includes this kind of stuff. I should have worn a condom, you should have made me, we should have a lot of things. we are human. Our generation has this stuff. the next generation will all be inoculated and will have sex with electric glass penises and digital vaginas and they’ll get software viruses instead. It’s part of life.
C.K. went on to add that “there’s no good tests for guys and even that condoms don’t stop s***.” Anyone who had a seventh-grade health class knows that that is faulty logic. The comedian then wrote an episode of his hit show Louie which had a very similar STD plot.
The incident is what ended the relationship, and the chef pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 2017, months before five women accused Louis C.K. of sexual misconduct.