No place like Rome

Roma sells ancient-Roman-style food near Fenchurch Street station at the east end of the City, near Aldgate. It is, therefore, a themed restaurant in a conventional, ebbing financial district, a cursed place in need of Windolene; and this is something to applaud, at least theoretically, because it is ambitious. Who remembers ambition, which is more interesting than greed? The last themed restaurant to open in these parts was Fable, a repulsive fake library and fusion destination for lawyers on Holborn Viaduct which I hope has burnt down, or at least been sued for copyright infringement by-makers of fairy tales everywhere. It was as magical as date rape, and the fairies fled.

A Roman-themed restaurant could work here now, if you want to eat metaphor; the parallels are thick and easy. The Romans built an empire, then lost it because they were forgetful and corrupt, and they slunk out of history and into tourism. Roma, however, seems to lack the vigour — the blood — of those it wants to honour with its vampire food, which includes salami. It lives inside a modernist horror: a shining brown puddle from which nothing interesting will rise, beyond possibly an audit. They should have looked for a piece of Roman London to ruin. There is plenty about, if you look. The Temple of Mithras is in the basement at Bloomberg, like a Balrog in reverse; that is, the ancient evil was, in this case, upstairs on the executive floor.

So I was hoping for Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, or a scene from Mel Brooks’s History of the World Part 1. (‘See — Hitler on Ice!’). I sought something vivid; something vicious; somewhere to hide. Instead, at the bottom of a staircase, brown-and-white tiles sit by a grey, despairing carpet; it is the carpet from The Office; the carpet from a thousand offices, in fact, all sinking into London clay with shame.