Orpheus allows customers to access more than 5000 online recipes for cocktails.

A Wellington bar that allows customers to create cocktails with names such as Asian Fetish and Pillow Biter has been accused of racism, homophobia and misogyny.

Former restaurant reviewer and blogger Tom Beard has taken new Allen St bar Orpheus to task over its iPad app, which gives customers access to about 5000 online recipes that also include concoctions such as Afghanistany [sic] W****, Abortion, and Alzheimers.

In a blog published on Monday, Beard said the bar's menu went beyond bawdy, but ultimately benign, names such as Sex on the Beach and Screaming Orgasm.

KEVIN STENT/ FAIRFAX NZ Orpheus bar owner Jeremy Morris-Jarrett, has withdrawn two offensively named cocktails from the menu after being criticised by a former restaurant critic.

"Some might say that these are just words, and we shouldn't be too sensitive," Beard wrote. "But anyone who's been the victim of violence or harassment while being called a w[****] or a pillow biter, or suffered from racial abuse or discrimination, will know that words are part of much wider systems of oppression, and can be actively harmful."

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Orpheus owner Jeremy Morris-Jarrett, who also developed the app, read Beard's criticism and said he had pulled the Afghanistany W**** and Pillow Biter cocktails.

Morris-Jarrett, whose native tongue is French, said he did not know "pillow biter" was a derogatory term for a gay man, and said the names were "like a joke" and not intended to offend.

He was "open to discussion" about removing other names.

With a Jamaican father and and a Jewish mother, Morris-Jarrett said it would be difficult to label him a racist and was perplexed at Asian Fetish being singled out in Beard's blog.

"Racist? Does that mean Asians are inferior to other races? I really struggle to follow the logic," he said.

Beard's party of six people who visited Orpheus on Saturday night included Raena Armitage, who said the bar's attitude to having unfiltered recipes on the menu was "appalling", and she did not buy Morris-Jarrett's "intention" argument.

"The thing about intention is that it's not magic. It doesn't matter if I tread on your foot and I didn't mean it – it still hurts," she said.

She would never return to the bar and would not recommend it to others.

"You just don't know how someone's going to feel. 'Pillow biter' – how offensive is that?"