A New York restaurant has a pulled a dessert called ‘Roofie Colada’ from its menu after angry backlash over social media. 
 
 The Phunky Elephant in Staten Island is known for its decadent after dinner creations like its Cookie Crumble Martini and Milky Way cocktail. The ‘Roofie Colada’ was a dessert-drink hybrid made with coffee ice cream, Kahlua, vanilla vodka, caramel, chocolate syrup, topped with donuts and whipped cream. The name is allegedly derived from a joke on the cartoon “Family Guy,” reports Advance media via SILive.com. 
 
 Seen at The Phunky Elephant on Staten Island. Complaints can be registered on their FB page. http://t.co/1tKOMdxzyC pic.twitter.com/S7noMYHiaZ — Ilyssa Silfen (@IlyssaSilfen) June 15, 2014 
 
 The dessert has been on the menu since the summer, appearing after the episode when the joke originally aired. Patricia Gaja, who owns the gastropub, admitted that she had been receiving complains about the dish for months, but felt that recent backlash was getting out of hand. 
 
 “Even with all that whipped cream you can't make a rape joke palatable. Roofie Colada = Not Funny,” user Lauren Marie posted. 
 
 Ilyssa Silfen, a patron who dined at the restaurant called out the restaurant on their Facebook page and received what she called a flip response: 
 
 “For the record, you know that there aren't any 'date rape' drugs in this dessert, right?" the Facebook response from The Phunky Elephant stated. "Just to be clear because I think you're taking this a little too far." 
 
 But now the restaurant has changed its attitude amid a string of more complaints. On Tuesday, page administrators posted an apology and said the drink will be taken off the menu until a suitable name replacement is found. 
 
 "The Phunky Elephant is a place with a unique atmosphere. We treat our guests with the utmost respect and we are always open to feedback to make our restaurant a welcoming and comfortable place with a touch of humor and quirkiness,” the message reads “ 
 
 “We certainly did not intend to create an impression of reckless or negligent behavior by presenting the desert at question to our guests nor did we mean to make anyone feel uncomfortable or insulted. This desert name was simply a homage to an adult cartoon and there was no malice. We obviously do not support date rape or any sort of violence for that matter." 
 
 "We humbly apologize if we have offended anyone and we appreciate the community around us and its awareness toward the cause. Please be advised that the dessert is currently off the menu until it is appropriately renamed." ||||| STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A controversial dessert name at the Phunky Elephant bar and restaurant has been removed from the menu after residents called the item offensive and insensitive. 
 
 The Rosebank restaurant's "Roofie Colada" dessert — with whipped cream, coffee ice cream and vanilla vodka — was a nod to the comedy of Fox's "Family Guy" animated series. But many say regardless of the original joke, the drug linked to date rape is nothing to take lightly. 
 
 "Even with all that whipped cream you can't make a rape joke palatable," wrote Lauren Marie Cappello on the restaurant's Facebook review page. 
 
 In response to an inquiry from the Advance, Patricia Gaja, the owner of Phunky Elephant, said the restaurant would be renaming the item, which has been receiving complaints since it debuted on the menu in June. 
 
 "We certainly did not intend to create an impression of reckless or negligent behavior by presenting the desert at question to our guests nor did we mean to make anyone feel uncomfortable or insulted," Gaja wrote. 
 
 Critics of the dessert's name say the reference was harmful because it normalized "roofies" as a date rape drug, making it acceptable to joke about a type of behavior that often leads to rape or sexual assault. 
 
 Gaja said she thought the criticism had "gotten a little bit out of hand," but she said she does "understand where people are coming from." 
 
 She and the restaurant staff came up with the name over the summer, after the Family Guy episode which mentioned the joke aired. She said she had only heard of one in-person complaint, but saw many on social media. 
 
 Prior to its removal from the menu, several patrons voiced their disapproval to restaurant employees. Up until Tuesday, the response was generally unsympathetic, said Stapleton resident Jeremiah Jurkiewicz. He spent his birthday at the restaurant with a group of friends over the summer. When they noticed the dessert, one of his friends expressed concern to a restaurant employee. 
 
 "They just said, 'we really like Family Guy here,'" Jurkiewicz said. 
 
 Other patrons told the Advance that when they tried to speak to restaurant employees about the item, the staff referenced the Family Guy episode. A friend of Jurkiewicz's, Ilyssa Silfen, publicly commented on the restaurant's Facebook page about the dessert. The response from the company was dismissive and insensitive, Silfen said. 
 
 "For the record, you know that there aren't any 'date rape' drugs in this dessert, right?" the Facebook response stated. "Just to be clear because I think you're taking this a little too far." 
 
 The message went on to criticize the public nature of the message she wrote, saying their response may have been different if she had sent them a private message. 
 
 Silfen said the response "showed me that they don't care about how they're trivializing the deadly serious issue of rape in our society as well as the pain and trauma of those who have been assaulted this way." 
 
 The Phunky Elephant's public apology stated that the naming of the dessert was not meant to condone rape. 
 
 "This desert name was simply a homage to an adult cartoon and there was no malice," the statement read. "We obviously do not support date rape or any sort of violence for that matter. We humbly apologize if we have offended anyone and we appreciate the community around us and its awareness toward the cause." 
 
 The dessert item was shared on social media and has stirred a debate among patrons, many of whom see no problem with the name of the dessert and have encouraged others not to get offended by the joke. When local musician Carl Gallagher posted a picture of the item from his visit on Saturday, it drew more than 90 comments. 
 
 "People generally either agree that it's in poor taste or say 'lighten up, it's just a joke,'" he said. "I can see both points of view. I think the issue here is this: an individual can say anything he wants and offend whomever he wishes. But an establishment has a responsibility to listen to the people whose money keeps them in business." 
 
 Gallagher and his girlfriend raised the issue with a restaurant employee during their meal, but said the employee laughed it off. 
 
 Several of Gallagher's friends responded that the intent was not malicious. 
 
 "I think that people hate the name, and associate 'roofie' instantly with date rape, which is probably not what the owners had in mind," local musician and north shore resident Rob Carey told the Advance. 
 
 The mixture of responses is troubling to residents like Jurkiewicz, who said it would be easy to change the name of the item instead of justify it. 
 
 "It just shows how people don't take things like rape and sexual assault seriously," Jurkiewicz said. 
 
 Gaja said the restaurant is in the process of creating a new seasonal menu now, which won't include the Roofie Colada. 
 
 "We'll put a little more thought into things and make sure we don't make anyone feel uncomfortable," she said. "The last thing we want is for people to feel uncomfortable by the name of something on our menu." ||||| Monica Kenyon, Sonia Ulrich and Marla Saltzer helped save a woman from being drugged by her date at a Santa Monica restaurant. 
 
 Three Los Angeles-area women are being credited with saving a young woman they didn't know from being drugged by a date at a Santa Monica restaurant.Sonia Ulrich, Marla Saltzer and Monica Kenyon detailed their story on Facebook on Friday - with a meme in "Charlie's Angels" style poses, declaring "Don't roofie someone on our watch!" The post has already been shared more than 70,000 times.The three were at the Fig restaurant at the Fairmont Miramar hotel for happy hour on Thursday.As they were eating, drinking and having a good time, Kenyon's attention was drawn to a nearby table where two people appeared to be on a date. The young woman had excused herself to go to the bathroom.Kenyon said she could see the man fumbling with his date's glass at the table and reaching for something."I just stared at him and watched something fall from his hand into the glass below," she recalled in an interview with ABC7 Eyewitness News.The other women noticed Kenyon get a funny look on her face as she watched the apparent drugging unfold in front of her eyes."I said, I just saw that guy put something in her drink. We're all like, what do we do?" Kenyon said.Ulrich went to the bathroom to find the girl and warn her."I found her in there and I just said 'Hey I know this is weird, but we saw that guy you're with put something in your drink'."Ulrich asked her how well she knew the man."She said 'Oh my God. .... He's one of my best friends'."The two had worked together for more than a year, the woman told Ulrich.The woman on the date returned to the table and tried to act as if nothing had happened.In the meantime, the three women alerted the restaurant manager, who talked to security. They checked the video and confirmed the women's story.Soon, Santa Monica police had arrived and took the man away.The Santa Monica Police Department later confirmed that the man had been arrested with multiple vials of a clear substance on him that has not yet been identified.For the three women, besides being able to save the young woman, they said the reaction from people online, as well as that night at the restaurant, has been gratifying."The crazy thing, though, afterwards, is people from all over the dining room were coming over and thanking us," Ulrich said. "And they all had stories of it happened to them or their sister or their roommate.""That was the really amazing thing - how many people sincerely thanked us because they had a personal experience with this type of thing."
– Family Guy humor works on the Family Guy, but not, apparently, on a drinks' menu. A Staten Island bar and restaurant has retired its "Roofie Colada" and apologized to patrons offended by what they saw as a date-rape joke, reports Fox News. The Phunky Elephant put the vokda and kahlua drink on the menu over the summer as a salute to the animated show, whose character Quaqmire is known to order it for his dates. Complaints began surfacing in person and online, but the restaurant initially shrugged them off, reports Staten Island Live. "For the record, you know that there aren't any 'date rape' drugs in this dessert, right?" went one Facebook reply from the restaurant a while back. But with criticism gathering social-media steam, Patricia Gaja pulled the drink and said it would be renamed. "We certainly did not intend to create an impression of reckless or negligent behavior," she wrote. "Nor did we mean to make anyone feel uncomfortable or insulted."