Barbecue Vendors Ejected From Saratoga Over an Ethnic Slur on Their Food Truck Andrea Loguidice and Brandon Snooks thought they had won the sandwich lottery when they were awarded a spot to sell barbecue at the Saratoga Race Course this summer. To prepare for the crowds, they developed a special menu, bought a six-foot smoker and cleared their calendar. But on Friday, opening day at Saratoga, their dream went up in smoke. Complaints came in, not about the cooking, but about the name on the side of the food truck: Wandering Dago, which Ms. Loguidice and Mr. Snooks had thought was cheeky and clever, but which racetrack officials deemed simply offensive. The truck was banned from the grounds. "We should have handled this before opening day last Friday, but once we started receiving complaints, we wanted to take immediate action on behalf of our customers," said Eric Wing, a spokesman for the New York Racing Association, which runs the track. We have a very diverse crowd with families and people of every age, and when any of our patrons say that they're offended by something, that concerns us tremendously. Ms. Loguidice and Mr. Snooks had been denied a permit this year to operate at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, a government complex adjacent to the State Capitol, by the Cuomo administration. "The name of the business was found to be an offensive ethnic slur by any standard," Heather Groll, a spokeswoman for the agency that operates the plaza, said on Monday. Ms. Loguidice and Mr. Snooks, who are both Italian-American, started their food truck about a year ago in Schenectady; their best-seller is the HomeWrecker, which features pulled pork, brisket, smoked bacon, barbecue sauce and melted provolone on a toasted ciabatta roll. She said they meant no offense by using the word "dago," a slur that the Oxford English Dictionary says is derived from the Spanish name Diego, but which they understood to refer to Italian immigrants who were day laborers, and were paid daily, or as the day goes. "Our daily pay depends on what happens that day, so we just thought it was a fun play on words," Ms. Loguidice said. She added: "We didn't think it was derogatory in any manner. It's self-referential. Who would self-reference themselves in a derogatory manner? Anthony J. Tamburri, dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, which is part of the City University of New York, said that regardless of the word's origin, it was not appropriate for a food truck. He described it as "the most offensive term one could use with regard to an Italian-American." Santina Haemmerle, the president of the anti-defamation arm of the Order Sons of Italy in America, agreed. "For our own people to use that kind of a name is inappropriate," she said. Even now, it inflames so many people. Ms. Loguidice said she and Mr. Snooks did not want to change the name of the truck. "It's a shame that something like our name is really having this much of an effect on people - there are such bigger things in the world to worry about," she said, as she and Mr. Snooks searched for another location. She lamented that they did not get to serve a single sandwich before being ordered to leave. Their problem had nothing to do with their name: their propane had not arrived in time.