I did not know the full story.
Oh, my gosh. Wait. What?
My jaw just like dropped.
What was that?
[explosion sound]
I told you so.
I wish that Sarma had felt that she could reach out
to the people that were closest to her at Pure.
Because we would have been there for her.
I have more questions, actually.
My name is Bonnie
and I was a manager at Pure Food and Wine.
Hi, my name is Jim.
I was the Operations Manager
at Pure Food and Wine.
Hi I'm Maiquen,
I worked at Pure Food and Wine
for eight and a half years.
My name is Nick.
In the mid 2000s,
I opened Pure Food and Wine as a server,
and then I became a floor manager.
And then I went on to help Sarma
start the business One Lucky Duck.
My name is Nikki
and I was previously the Executive Chef
at Pure Food and Wine.
I'm Joey Repice,
I was the longest standing employee
at Pure Food Wine.
I worked there for 10 years.
The walls were all like
dark and moody and red, the seats were red.
I think Sarma really sort of espoused this theory
that it should be a very romantic, sexy restaurant.
She wanted the food to feel sexy and the clientele were very sexy.
The garden was just an oasis.
A mini empire, if you will.
Rue McClanahan, a Golden Girl,
Blanche, came into the restaurant.
I texted Sarma saying,
"Can we please give Rue McClanahan a cookbook?"
Someone on the other line says,
"We'll be there in 20 minutes with former President Bill Clinton."
And we're like,
"Is this real?"
It was Woody Harrelson, the magician David Blaine.
When they were finished with their lunch, they went back out
and the city of New York had towed their motorcycles.
And so they were just sitting on that front sort of
garden level patio in front of the restaurant.
And I had to take my shot.
I asked him to do a trick for me.
And he did like, the coolest trick that's ever been done.
I turned to my left and like, literally,
David Blaine is like, levitating right beside me.
They called up and they said,
"Hey, I know you're just about to close,
but we want to come in, we're with Stevie Wonder.
Can you help us out?"
And I was like, "Yes."
I didn't even ask the chef, I was just, "Yes."
Everything was a song, you know, we brought a dish to him and said,
"This has a balsamic reduction." And he's like,
♪ Balsamic reduction ♪
People were so talented at this restaurant, and Sarma supported all of us.
I still look back with such
fond memories of how supportive and how much she championed me.
We had a a great environment in the kitchen.
Friendly, we loved each other.
We really created a family.
I met my partner there.
She and I have been together for seven years.
The most incredible thing that happened at Pure Food and Wine
is that I got to meet my wife.
We used to do holidays together.
Even at the restaurant, we would have a big Thanksgiving.
I look back and I'm like, blown away by
how cool the people were that worked there.
It seems like a death in a way.
We all have our good memories, but we'll never have those garden nights again.
There was so much more than just a job that was lost in that place.
We were making it, or so we thought.
And so my biggest question was, "Why?"
And I think that's the biggest question everyone has.
What happened to the money?
What was Shane, a.k.a. Anthony doing?
It didn't track for Sarma for the answer to be like,
Sarma just gave all this money to this guy.
That didn't make any sense for what she wanted to do or for anything.
I was like, "Holy shit, I didn't know shit."
One thing that was a surprise for me
was finding out that Michael Caledonia,
who Sarma introduced me to as
an investor for Pure Food and Wine, it turns out that was actually Anthony.
And I did not know that.
I was on email threads with this person.
The money that just kept flying out,
the transfers that just kept happening.
It was just shocking, really.
I was just blown away.
I think the most surprising piece was
that they posted up in Vegas for like 10 months.
I was just there for a wedding, and after four days, I was exhausted.
Like, I could not do anything.
And it just made me go, like, "Who could live in Vegas for 10 months
and not just go bat-shit crazy?"
There were over 100 employees there.
Before they lost their jobs,
they didn't get paid.
And I didn't think that Sarma really showed any empathy for that.
I think people
are still going to be polarized about Sarma
and what she went through.
He was promising money, promising that her debt would go away.
He was promising that she was going to be immortal or whatever.
It's just hard because I feel like I have such a skepticism,
like deep in my core that I'm like,
"If it's too good to be true."
Sarma's journey was sort of fraught with insecurity.
Maybe too focused on trying to be the best in other people's eyes.
I would appreciate having her reach out and
just connect to us.
I still feel like there's some mystery
surrounding the whole story.
And maybe we'll find out or maybe we won't.
Since leaving Pure Food and Wine
I've bounced around a couple of restaurants.
The pandemic hit.
And now I'm currently working at a restaurant in Harlem, managing.
Family, travel, and just being present in the now.
I live in Miami now.
And just through all of my plant-based experience,
I am seeing more and more demand
for people that want to learn more about plant-based cooking.
So I started a consultancy and it's called Mostly Vegan.
And with Mostly Vegan, it's my goal to help
small businesses or existing businesses learn more about plant-based food.
We bought a house in the Mid-Hudson Valley region of New York.
Right now I'm a baker and I'm going to school online
at Oregon State University, I'm pursuing a sustainability degree.
I started school during the pandemic with the hopes of
maybe getting out of the service side of the restaurant industry
and doing something with the operations again,
the way that I did at Pure Food and Wine,
but focusing on the sustainability of food service.
I launched and created a hot sauce.
It was made for the love of my life.
It's predominantly roasted pepper forward,
very flavor forward.
And my wife and I moved to Oregon
and I'm a hundred percent focused on Joey's Hot Sauce.
So I moved back to Denver in 2019.
I met a woman shortly after I moved back.
And we're now married. We're trying to have a family.
So that sort of sounds lovely right now at this phase of my life.
My husband and I live in California, where we're raising our two cats.
I am a funeral coordinator,
and bereavement minister, and a grief counselor.
We never had,
like a funeral or a memorial or anything for Pure.
You know, I was across the country when things really ended,
but a lot of my friends and staff, they were there for that.
We sort of haven't gotten to, they haven't had any closure,
and none of us have had it really either.
Parts were extremely painful to watch.
Tragic.
This is so sad.
Be honest. Just be honest.
You don't light money on fire.
You never really know what another person's going through,
no matter how well you think you know them.
I hope people will take away from this
that empathy is important.
Stay connected to people that you love.
Don't isolate.
Pure Food and Wine family, miss you guys.
Hope we can do it again.