The Real 'Bad Vegan'

the unchecked rise of Matthew Kenney

Dollars are harder to stretch these days and dining out is becoming prohibitively expensive for so many people. We all want to support local spots but often we go to big, venture-backed restaurants because of their aesthetics and competitively priced menus. It’s hard to make a living running a restaurant and we all know 70% of restaurants fail within the first three years. I can only imagine that those numbers are even worse for vegan spots. Often the quality of the food and the success of the restaurant seem to be entirely unrelated. One of my favorite restaurants in LA was Pure Luck. It was affordable, delicious, and always packed. Their jackfruit was incredible, their appetizers top notch, but rumor has it that they couldn’t get their shit together when it came to running the business. They shuttered in 2011, with a couple years of random pop-ups that followed, and now they only exist in the memories of old-time LA vegans like myself. It’s easy to assume that vegan restaurants are ethically run simply because of the morality of movement but that is often far from the case. We just don’t like to talk about it. There are restaurants and chefs whose countless failures and financial embarrassments are somehow kept separate from their identity in the food space and vegan community. This has to end. We have to stop supporting bad actors like Matthew Kenney and his numerous restaurants.  I present to you my rant about Matthew Kenney.

great reporting by Daniel Miller and Roger Vincent for The LA Times

Last week, the LA Times wrote about vegan darling Matthew Kenney and his crumbling restaurant empire. This piece has been a long time coming. As of spring 2022, Kenney had over 50 eateries spread out over 5 continents with many located right here in Los Angeles. If you’ve been vegan in LA long enough, you're bound to have stories about Kenney, Moby, and the rest of the C list vegan influencers who buzz around anyone who can raise their profile. You’lll see them at every PETA event, Moby’s weird birthday parties, and the confusingly lavish Mercy For Animals Gala year after year. Despite their ethical eating, the stories that filter through the vegan gossip line in Los Angeles are full of all the sin and salacious details you’d expect from this city. 

Matthew and Sarma in 2005 via Getty Images

Kenney was always one of the more confusing figures on the scene. He seemed to be opening a new vegan restaurant every other year. I ate at one of his first ventures into vegan dining, Pure Food and Wine, in 2008 in New York City. I remember having a great time and enjoying the food, despite it being the most expensive meal I had ever eaten. If the name sounds familiar it’s because the spot and his business partner/former girlfriend Sarma Melngailis were highlighted in Netflix’s hit limited series Bad Vegan in 2022. A multitude of financial crimes were covered in the series but somehow Kenney’s role in the early years of the restaurant were glossed over. As early as 2002, Matthew Kenney was already well known for his financial mismanagement. One restaurant industry source told Observer reporters in 2002 that he had been bouncing checks to employees and purveyors since 1995. He was removed from his role at Pure Food and Wine because of this history. But his name slipped from my mind after that meal until I moved to LA in 2009.

Kenney’s restaurants are in so many neighborhoods in LA. When his name comes up at vegan events people fawn over his restaurants in a way I never hear people talk about them in private. He presents as a rich but aloof chef who enjoys the company of women 30-40 years his junior, a boring but common kind of dude in LA. Male vegan chefs have told me what a valuable mentor he was to them but the only stories I’ve heard about him from women are about how disposable he made them feel. But everyone agrees, this guy has friends with deep pockets. Opening a restaurant is an EXTREMELY expensive enterprise, particularly in cities like LA and New York. Matthew Kenney has opened at least 57 of them over the years, in addition to writing 13 cookbooks. If you just look at those facts, the man is a clear success story and one that vegan outlets like VegNews love to highlight. But unfortunately, after all the shine and good press from the opening wear off, Kenney’s businesses leave a trail of bounced checks, hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid rent, endless allegations of fraud, and massive amounts of litigation with Kenney safely insulated behind a wall of LLCs.

why????????

 The LA Times piece shows a small but disturbing slice of this. It’s hard to wrap your mind around. He has been doing this for decades but somehow continues to fail upwards. You can see in his interviews that he will always place the blame elsewhere, but after three decades of the same thing happening over and over, the blame must be placed on him.

Aside from his restaurants, Kenney’s name pops up in education as well. He ran The Matthew Kenney Culinary Academy years before licensing the name to his former COO Adam Zucker in 2017. Students had their classes canceled at this abrupt change and their tuition was lost. Then the new school, now called PlantLab, abruptly canceled all classes and folded a year later after Adam went on missing and was subsequently arrested. Again, a new crop of students who had paid up to $6000 for these classes were left in the cold with very few ever receiving a refund. Zucker was eventually charged with 35 felonies that ranged from money laundering to grand theft by embezzlement to the tune of $2.4 million and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. But those charges stem from his role as executive vice president of licensing at Artissimo Designs which predates his takeover at Plantlab but not his work with Kenney. Basically, he was shady as hell for a long time like so many people Kenney ends up in business with. In 2020 Matthew Kenney got back into education opening up The Food Future Institute which promises “a culinary educational experience dedicated to teaching the art of elevated plant-based cuisine to the next generation of chefs, home cooks, and foodies.” Kenney’s profile on FFI’s landing page fails to mention his previous cooking schools. Weird.

right from The Food Future Institute website

I know it is frowned upon in vegan circles to criticize one of our own, particularly one as successful as Matthew Kenney. But we all lose when people like this are given the support, good-will, and press of the food and vegan communities without any of the consequences. Good, locally run enterprises deserve your support and hard-earned money. They bust their asses, turn out great food, and never receive even a quarter of the press that Matthew Kenney’s projects do. Give them your money instead of people who can’t seem to stay out of business with con-artists and don’t pay their staff or bills. Aren’t sure where to eat out? Cooking at home is the only way to make sure you aren’t part of some vegan fuckery. Matthew Kenney has made so much money and yet continues to deprive so many of money that they rightfully deserve. His projects don’t deserve your time or attention.