Blogger Questions The Friendly Toast's Choice to Name Cocktail "Strange Fruit"

Blogger Mita Shah Hoppenfeld had an uncomfortable encounter with the drink menu at Friendly Toast over the weekend: She shares on Cambridge Day that she was horrified by the establishment's choice to call a cocktail "Strange Fruit."

The name refers to a song made famous in 1939 by Billie Holiday, a powerful protest song that viscerally describes the lynching of black people in the American South.

The post originally appeared on Hoppenfeld's personal blog, the Clumsy Cook. She writes about how the Friendly Toast staff didn't really seem to understand why the cocktail name offended her enough to say something to them.

"I truly don't believe that anyone at The Friendly Toast made a conscious decision to name a beverage after lynching. I think they just didn't think about it, and that's the problem," she writes.

Hoppenfeld updated her post today to reflect that The Friendly Toast says it has pulled the drink menus that listed the cocktail.

Read the whole blog post for Hoppenfeld's full perspective.

UPDATE: On Tuesday evening, the Friendly Toast co-owners Eric Goodwin and Scott Pulver issued a formal apology and explanation of the incident on their Facebook page and website.