A Vancouver restaurant named after cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar is facing mounting backlash from the city's Colombian community over its notorious namesake.

Escobar executive chef Sarah Kahani said the name isn't intended to make light of the violence and cruelty thousands of Colombians endured during the height of the drug lord's career, but simply to act as a recognizable name that reflects the restaurant's Latin-inspired menu.

"We did do our research on the name and we came up with Escobar because it's a play on words. It's a very recognized name in Latin culture," she told CTV News. "It has 'bar' in the name and we are a restaurant-bar."

Kahani equated the restaurant's use of the name to the popularity of films and TV shows about drug dealers and gangsters, including recent Netflix series "Narcos," which chronicles Escobar's rise in the 1970s and 80s.

"At the end of the day, it's name recognition. We are entertainment. We're not trying to take a political stance," she said. "Is it our goal or our main purpose to promote this person? Absolutely not."

But for Berta Lopera, a Colombo-Canadian who emigrated in the late 1990s, the name Escobar is anything but entertaining.

"It is somehow commemorating Pablo Escobar," she said. "It makes me feel uncomfortable because it was an unbelievably painful era for all of us."

Lopera and other members of Metro Vancouver's Colombian community are now speaking out against the restaurant's choice of name. They say the casual use of the name shows a lack of respect for those who survived in a time when the Colombian drug trade was causing tens of thousands of deaths a year.

"We shouldn't commemorate or glorify Pablo Escobar," she said. "They should acknowledge that it is not entertainment… It wasn't entertainment, and it will never be entertainment."

Social media users have been quick to weigh in on the controversy, many criticizing the establishment.

Others, however, defended Escobar.

"I am Colombian and I don't care," one user wrote. "Come on people. Don't be too sensitive."

Even the Consul General of Colombia has added their voice to the outcry, asking Escobar's owners to reconsider the name.

"How do you think an American would feel is somebody opened a restaurant with the name Osama Bin Laden? Or how would a Canadian feel if somebody opened up a restaurant named Marc Lepine or with the name of the person responsible for the Toronto tragedy last week?" Diana Patricia Aguilar Pulido wrote in a scathing public statement.

"From some of the publicity, it is evident that, this restaurant wants to be popular and make a profit based on a character that provided terrible suffering to countless Colombian widows, parents, children and families of all sectors of society."

Escobar has removed a cocktail named "The Pablo" from its menu in response to the backlash.

"We have decided out of respect for them, that we will be generous enough to remove that cocktail from our menu," she said. "We truly regret that anyone has had this kind of emotional response to our name. We're quite surprised and we feel terrible about it."

So far, however, the restaurant says it won't change its name.

Escobar is not the first Metro Vancouver restaurant to come under fire for making reference to criminals. In 2016, a Surrey restaurant pulled a drink named after B.C. serial killer Robert Pickton from its menu following public outcry.

With files from CTV Vancouver's David Molko