Look, I suppose if you really can’t get your hands on flamingo, parrot will do. And don’t take it from me, but Marcus Gavius Apicius – that first-century AD Roman recipe writer and exotic avian flesh enthusiast. Once you’ve sourced your bird it’s time to get boiling. Add leeks, cumin, coriander, mint and all those other aromatics used to conceal bad flavour. The tongue is the most desirable part, nice and greasy – this is beak to tail-feathers dining. And if that sound I hear is you squirming, then get over it!
Of the most fashionable analogies of the 21st century – politics is Orwellian, the machinery of the state is Kafkaesque – one has emerged more cleanly than any other. Haven’t you heard? We are living in a new age of imperial profligacy. Our morals? Corrupt. Positively Neronian. In terminal decline. Donald Trump? The standard bearer for this Julio-Claudian bloodthirsty shift. Imperator, rex, fiddler-in-chief. If we are to believe the brains down at the bad-analogy factory, we would have to think that Trump’s America makes the tempora and mores of Cicero’s anxieties look like a day out at Disneyland.
So, in the spirit of such desperate times – and don’t make me say “when in Rome” because I will refuse – I headed to Bocca di Lupo in Soho for a Friday lunch. The beloved restaurant usually trades in modern, regional Italian cooking. But good chefs can take you anywhere, and so just for January it’s straight back to ancient Rome for a menu inspired by our oh-so-venal forebears. Even Apicius himself spent the twilight years of his life broke and destitute – the culinary extravagances had drained his resources, driving the princeps of gluttony to suicide. Quick, someone tell me the Latin for heavy-handed.
A glance at the menu reveals a conspicuous absence of both flamingo and parrot – the existence of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in 2026 Britain, I might suggest, is just one small thing that separates us from the triclinia of Pompeii and Ostia. Instead, we eat duck with prunes. No tongue, thanks for checking. It is warming – Christmas in January. But it does not stir in me any desire to court a legion and march on the city. To take a nap? Perhaps. But if I ever possessed any martial sensibility I can tell you this: thick, dark, buttery sauce is the way to drum it right out of you.
Elsewhere, there are lamb kidneys stuffed with a hazelnut pesto, which are nice if you like lamb kidneys and for many that is a big if. Then there are mushrooms with cumin and honey, which taste like mushrooms with cumin and honey. We eat mullet stuffed with lovage – and if you are wondering what lovage is, imagine celery dialled up to 11. The overwhelming effect is that this meal is not quite of this world – or perhaps, of a world 2,000 years ago. Which is to say, this was a successfully executed cumin-drenched expedition.
And then there is something engagingly named EMPHRACTUM BAIANUM – that’s jellyfish stew to you. I don’t know if the NHS is equipped to deal with whatever never-before-detected toxin that might be nestled deep in jellyfish soup, but I am not willing to test it. And the good news? The soup also contained oysters, so this otherwise robust diner couldn’t test it if she wanted to. Oysters and I get along about as well as dogs and chocolate.
Bocca di Lupo’s kitchen is of the highest standard, and it is not their fault that the Orwellian/Kafkaesque (delete as appropriate) busybodies down at the FSA won’t let them feed us flamingo tongue. But after my meal – only ever designed to be a playful jaunt – I quietened to a more circumspect place.
The Romans were nothing like us – they were far nastier, with considerably worse tastes, and had a penchant for lurking behind curtains with primitive knives or murdering their mothers in collapsible boats. But if we keep searching, we will eventually find ourselves in the corrupted halls of the senate and the bloody ghettos of the subura. I suggest we put down the jellyfish stew and stop looking.
[Further reading: Valentino and the dream of elegance]
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This article appears in the 21 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Europe is back
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