A 2,000-year-old fast food restaurant was recently discovered in Pompeii. It is going to open to the public on August 12. According to the Telegraph, the historic eatery served snails, duck, pig, goat, and fish to its Roman patrons. Since A.D. 79, traces of these are in terracotta pots. They are likewise under volcanic ash.
The thermopolium, a type of food station prevalent throughout the Roman world, was first excavated in 2019. Volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius’ cataclysmic eruption buried the city more than 2,000 years ago. Archaeological park’s Regio V site found the eatery to be in outstanding condition.
The discovery of the pots, according to Massimo Osanna, director of the Pompeii archaeological park, provided “extraordinary insight” into Roman cuisine. Despite archaeologists excavating over 80 other comparable cafes, this one is the “best preserved.”
The restaurant is likewise an early version of modern-day Italy’s ‘Tavola Calda’. It is an inexpensive restaurant that sells ready-to-eat meals and drinks. A mural of a sea goddess on a horse graces a counter full of holes; steaming pots of food may be on display inside the restaurant.
Other frescoes portray a big rooster and a couple of ducks, which could have been among the meat on offer. Above a fresco of a chained dog, lewd graffiti intended at insulting the establishment’s owner is also into black paint.
“Nicia cinaede cacator,” it reads. According to archaeologists, this was a homophobic slur referring to a catamite, an adolescent boy who sleeps with older men. Also, the park wrote in a statement that presumably “a prankster who sought to poke fun at the owner,”