DC pizza chain gets backlash for naming dessert after late Mayor Barry, alluding to his drug use

A Washington, D.C., pizza chain is facing backlash for appearing to name a new dessert after the city's late Mayor Marion Barry and alluding to his cocaine use. 

"Our new Marion Berry Knots will blow you away!" the chain, &pizza, wrote on the social media platform, X. "Get them before they’re gone."

Barry served as mayor from 1979 to 1991, then 1995 to 1999. 

In 1991 he was arrested in an FBI sting operation for smoking crystalized, or crack, cocaine with a woman. The incident in a luxury D.C. hotel was captured on video. Barry was sentenced to six months in prison for misdemeanor cocaine possession. He argued the arrest and conviction was a "setup."

Another line for the pizza chain's marketing campaign reads. "&PIZZA CRACKS OPEN NEW THRESHOLD FOR DESSERT WITH KNOTS SO GOOD IT’S LIKELY A FELONY," according to Washingtonian magazine.

Some of the images promoting the knots showed powdered sugar that looked like cocaine wrapped in a baggie, which critics argue suggest powdered cocaine and the baggies in which the drug is kept and sold. 

“I just think it’s racist," Barry’s wife, Cora Masters Barry, said in an interview with DC News Now. "In this city, it is outrageously racist. You can print that. It’s racist and disrespectful."

&Pizza CEO Mike Burns stood by the product, saying, "“We’re talking about a marionberry, that’s spelled with an ‘e’. We stuff that into a knot, drizzle it with icing and then top it with powdered sugar. It’s delicious. We can’t wait for D.C. to try it."

Some elected officials in D.C. have called for an &Pizza boycott, and local activists said that Barry's history is being tarnished. Barry passed away in 2014.

Councilmember Trayon White, who represents the same Ward that Barry did when he was on the City Council, called the marketing campaign a “shameless and tasteless exploitation of Marion S. Barry’s legacy," DC News Now also reports.