Vancouver restaurant taking heat over name
‘You wouldn’t eat at a place called Hitler’s or Bin Laden’s’
VANCOUVER — A Latin-themed restaurant in Vancouver is drawing criticism for the name it shares with a notorious Colombian drug lord responsible for thousands of deaths.
A spokeswoman for Escobar said the restaurant owners aren’t trying to make a political statement or offend anyone with the name.
However, Paola Murillo, executive director for Latincouver, a non-profit cultural society, said the name romanticizes the damage Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel caused over 30 years in South America and the United States.
“They’re glorifying a name that brings so much pain,” Murillo said. “Just talking about this brings a knot to my stomach.”
“You wouldn’t eat at a place called Hitler’s or Bin Laden’s,” she said.
Murillo said she contacted co-owners Alex Kyriazis and Ari Demosten to discuss the name, saying she doesn’t want to see the restaurant fail because of what it’s called.
“We’re a community of 100,000 Latin Americans living in Vancouver and I think we’re quite supportive of each other ... but I think it’s in their best interest to reconsider.”
Neither Kyriazis nor Demosten responded to a request for an interview.
Escobar’s executive chef Sarah Kashani said the restaurant owners are apologetic if they offended anyone but will keep the name. “We’re entertainment, we’re a restaurant. It’s a very common name in Latin culture.” Kashani said restaurants and bars elsewhere in Canada have used the name Escobar while other establishments using criminals’ names, including Capone’s, also exist.
Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cocaine cartel was responsible for thousands of deaths. He died in 1993 during a shootout with Colombian police.
Diana Patricia Aguilar Pulido, consul general of Colombia in Vancouver, said Escobar was responsible for “what is arguably the darkest episode of Columbian history.”
“How would a Canadian feel if somebody opened up a restaurant named Marc Lepine?” she said of the gunman who killed 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal in 1989.
Murillo, of Latincouver, said she’s heard some people are planing an opening-day protest at the restaurant on May 11, but said marching in the street is not the answer.