Calls for Milk Bar to Rename Its Crack Pie Get Louder

Boston restaurant critic says Milk Bar’s Crack Pie is ‘not cute’

New York bakery Milk Bar opened a store in Cambridge this year, and Boston Globe food critic Devra First is not impressed with the dessert shop’s nomenclature. She criticizes the brand for naming its signature dessert — the “super-sweet, oat-crusted” Crack Pie — after an addictive drug that’s heavily affected minority groups. “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),” she writes. “Crack Pie is just in bad taste.”

Harvey Weinstein met with a private investigator at Cipriani Dolci

Former Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was spotted at Italian restaurant Cipriani Dolci inside Grand Central, where he was reportedly meeting with a private investigator that’s helping him maneuver through several sexual assault charges. Weinstein has been accused of sexual assault by multiple women, and a number of those incidents have allegedly happened within Cipriani restaurants — which one woman says Weinstein used as his “hunting ground.”

NYC restaurants want diners to stop stealing their metal straws (and plants)

Local cocktail bars and restaurants are sick of seeing people steal their metal straws. Sother Teague of East Village bars Amor y Amargo and Mother of Pearl tells the Post he was losing up to 50 metal straws every month at the latter. Now, he’s begun charging people: If he sees the straw is gone, he’ll tack it onto their bills. Over at Hunky Dory in Crown Heights, owner Claire Sprouse says diners have even stuffed her indoor plants into their purses. She only serves one cocktail with a metal straw for that very reason. “If you don’t bolt it down, people will take it,” she says.

Openings and coming attractions

The Upper West Side is gaining a new Italian spot called Pasta Franco, located at 508 Columbus Ave., between 84th and 85th streets. Over at at 680 Columbus Ave., on the corner of 93rd Street, kosher restaurant New Amsterdam Burger Bar is opening soon. Fried chicken chain Popeye’s has also moved into the neighborhood with a new store at 2534 Broadway, between 94th and 95th streets. Meanwhile over in the East Village, it looks like a new noodle bar called Jiang Diner will open at 309 East Fifth St., between First and Second avenues. Across the bridge in Brooklyn Heights, bagel shop Black Seed Bagels debuts its first branch in the borough today at 123 Court St.

A wage lawsuit against the Waverly Inn

Former Waverly Inn server David Lazazzera is suing owner (and ex-Vanity Fair editor) Graydon Carter over allegedly unfair wages. Lazazzera worked at the restaurant from 2015 until this past January, when he was allegedly fired over a napkin-folding dispute, the Post reports. He claims the restaurant paid him poorly and required servers to do menial tasks like fold 50 napkins at the end of every shift.