Escobar owners 'displeased' eatery being 'targeted' over name, again
Earlier this week the Vancouver Food Policy Council released an open letter to show solidarity with the Latin American community’s response to the opening of Escobar, a restaurant located at 4245 Fraser Street.
It’s been five months since the Latin eatery opened its doors. And after receiving backlash prior to opening their doors and during their first few days of operation, it’s clear that some members of Latin community have a problem with the eatery continuing to run under the name affiliated with infamous narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar.
See also
- Vancouver Food Policy Council joins in condemning Escobar restaurant
- 'Escobar' owners respond to backlash over controversial restaurant name
Owners Ari Demosten and Alex Kyriazis have released a statement in response to the letter from the Vancouver Food Policy Council, who condemned the establishment for not being “culturally appropriate.”
Escobar’s owners’ full statement is as follows:
Dear Readers,
We are very displeased that our restaurant is being targeted once again for the issue of our name. Our restaurant has absolutely nothing to do with anything narcoterrorist related. We have already made official statements and met with 3 members of the Latin community (Paola Murilo from Latincouver, Jorge Posada representing the Colombian Community of Vancouver and Yudi Sonnichsen from ExpoPlaza Latina). Our guests can attest to the fact that there is no theme of narcoterrorism anywhere in our establishment; yet we are receiving threats again. The people making these claims have not stepped foot in our establishment, they have not seen or even spoke with us, yet they choose to make false claims. We find it extremely unprofessional that the Vancouver Food Policy Council has made any statement without visiting our establishment or even calling us to get an official statement from us. We have been working extremely hard to provide a drinking and dining experience that we feel is unavailable in Vancouver currently and over the past month we have been building a new cocktail and food menu to launch for the winter season. On the day of our launch we are hit with negative media attention for the second time in under 6 months. We are not planning to change our name, we have worked hard to build our clientele and are trying to move forward from this whole ordeal. If anybody who is making these allegations feels they want to make the right decision and gather the information they need they are welcome to come for a cocktail and dining experience and then make their decision. We welcome everybody with open arms and have no hard feelings with anything that has happened to date.
Ari & Alex
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