Excavation shows: takeaway food is centuries old
Even in the ancient Roman Empire, you didn’t have to cook every day: you could pick up an easy meal at a kind of snack bar and eat it in the square out front. During recent excavations in Pompeii, archaeologists discovered a complete thermopolium, which they describe as a takeaway restaurant from the year 79 AD.
The archaeologists found a takeaway restaurant with a large counter containing recesses where earthenware pots filled with food could probably be placed. The researchers were also able to determine what was served at the thermopolium: duck, snails, chicken and pork. There were probably around eighty takeaway restaurants in Pompeii, but this is the most complete restaurant found during the excavations. The colourful decorations on the side and front of the takeaway counter are striking. They depict chickens and ducks, which probably served as advertisements for the food available there—just like those illuminated signs at McDonald’s.
Complete with guard dog
A guard dog was also painted on the counter, probably to protect the restaurant. It can’t be a coincidence that the skeleton of a dog was found in the restaurant, although it wasn’t as large and muscular as the image suggests. Parts of the skeleton of a man around fifty years old were also found, near a bed in the corner of the restaurant, more or less behind the scenes. The archaeologists even found graffiti scratched into a corner of the counter.
And a glass of wine
The centuries-old restaurant is located just outside the centre of Pompeii. Earlier, a fountain was excavated at this site, in a small square in front of the restaurant. The chief archaeologist explains that you could probably pick up a quick bite at the restaurant and then eat it outside. A team of researchers is now cataloguing all the food remains found in the thermopolium. Among other things, they found ground beans. These were probably used to colour and flavour wine, as Apicius, the cookbook writer of the time, recorded. So at this snack bar, you could order a glass of wine with your portion of snails to go too!
Read also:
- 30 dishes from the past that will make you feel sorry for your parents
- These are the nastiest mixed drinks you used to have before going out
- Why Neanderthals didn’t like chicory (and neither do you)
Source: nos.nl
