Sarma Melngailis is the Proprietor and Co-Founder of NYC’s premier raw and vegan restaurant Pure Food and Wine. She is also the Founder and CEO of One Lucky Duck, Holdings LLC, which operates the One Lucky Duck brand. This includes the company’s online boutique, www.oneluckyduck.com, which offers carefully selected products all in support of living a raw, vegan, organic and eco- friendly lifestyle. One Lucky Duck also carries its own line of snack products all made and packaged by hand at Pure Food and Wine. These are sold at oneluckyduck.com and in the restaurant’s own One Lucky Duck takeaway and retail shop, as well as its more recently opened One Lucky Duck across town in Manhattan’s famous Chelsea Market.
Sarma is the co-author of Raw Food/Real World (Harper Collins, 2005), a book of recipes, practical advice and the story of how she made the change to a raw and vegan diet. Her second book with Harper Collins, Living Raw Food, was published in June 2009. Living Raw Food includes even more raw vegan recipes, as well as information and advice on how to successfully maintain a raw food diet after a number of years.
Sarma is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute. She holds a B.S. in Economics and a B.A. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She worked in investment banking and private equity before beginning her career in the food world.
