[Image via Milk Bar]
The East Village-based dessert spot Milk Bar has changed the name of its most-popular item.
Founder Christina Tosi made the announcement yesterday:
We’ve made the decision to stop using the name Crack Pie. Starting today, it will be known as Milk Bar Pie. Below, I’m sharing the note I sent to the Milk Bar team. The fact of the matter is, anyone who visits this website or our stores or our social media is our family too, and we listen to what you have to say.
While change is never easy, we feel this is the right decision. Not everything will happen at once - the next few weeks and months will be a transition period. Your support means everything to us and if you have feelings or questions about it, we’re always here.
The name switcheroo comes less than a month after Boston Globe food scribe Devra First wrote a column titled "There’s nothing cute about crack pie" following the opening of a Milk Bar in Cambridge, Mass.
As she wrote about the tone-deaf name:
If it seemed funny a decade ago to name a dessert after an addictive drug, the joke was one of privilege. The crack epidemic of the 1980s hurt largely poor, largely black communities, not the people who were heading to the East Village to spend $5 on a slice of pie (the price has since gone up to $6).
Chris Crowley at Grub Street made a similar case back in December about the use of "crack" to describe foods.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Food for thought: Milk Bar's Crack Pie is not a cute name, critic says
