Tonight, however, the revelers had no thoughts of molten lava.
They were following in the footsteps of the Epicureans, reclining on couches, watching jugglers and acrobats, listening to poetry These Romans-for-a-night were the guests of a giant German insurance company that had hired both the amphitheater and the noblest Roman restaurant in Pompeii, Il Principe, to re-create the past. The good news here is that within the next year, this history
will repeat itself - every night - when a branch of Il Principe will become the first private restaurant ever allowed to open on the famously scorched earth that is the hallowed ground of Pompeii.
For the gastronomically inclined culturati, the one almost invariable drawback to visiting sites of great historical interest is the generally execrable quality of culinary options to sustain, much less inspire, the traveler exploring the glories of the past.

Until now the best Pompeii visitors could hope to ingest was soggy pizza and stale tramezzini (sandwiches) at a snack bar near the temple of Apollo. No
temple of gastronomy, the snack bar closed four years ago and never
reopened. Candy bars and Coca-Cola are currently all the visitor can have while exploring this wonder of the world, which merits at least a full day's excursion from Naples. Sadly, the Pompeii day ends at 5 p.m., and Il Principe, the one local dining shrine worthy of the ruins, doesn't open for dinner until 7:3o p.m. Which leaves most visitors slim choice but to trek back to Naples-for superb spaghetti alle vongole to be sure, but what a shame to miss the inspired Apician cookery that has made the Michelin-starred Il Principe one of the most unique restaurants in all of Italy.

Soon, however, any lunch or dinner in Pompeii will be an event, if not a bacchanal, for Il Principe owner Marco Carli has completed a four year courtship of a highly fickle and changing Italian government that has culminated in what promises to be a felicitous marriage of culinary arts and bureaucratic intrigue. Imagine the union of Escoffier and Machiavelli to achieve some idea of what Carli had to go through to get a green light, and you can appreciate his Herculean labors. What's more, Carli helped convince the
archaeological authorities to inaugurate a sound-and-light show that will keep Pompeii open most nights. With the restaurant and the spectacle, this city of the dead promises to be one of the liveliest spots in Italy. How Carli pulled it off is a classic case study of one man's persistence, creativity and diplomacy.
 

"When I married my wife (a Pompeii native), I married the culture of Pompeii," says Carli, an elegant man in his late forties whose bespoke suits and confident stride might make you think he was a legislator himself rather than a restaurateur navigating the shoals of power. A native of Lucca, where his father was a wholesaler of pastas and olive oils to restaurants, Carli grew up in the
food trade. He managed several hotels in the ritzy Tuscan beach resort of Forte dei Marmi, where, in 1985, he met his wife, Pina, whose family owned a small inn in Pompeii. Pina insisted she could live nowhere else, and, as the ancient Romans said, amor vincit omnia (love conquers all). Marco Carli moved south to make his life and career, and a second love affair, with Pompeii, began.
"I was amazed by the food of the region," Carli says. "The fish, the vegetables, the incredible tomatoes, the best bread in the world" inspired him to open Il Principe in 1987 on the site of a former pizzeria whose owner had decamped to better opportunities in Germany. It was a vast, old, high ceilinged space, which Carli decorated with reproductions of Pompeii's legendary murals and
mosaics of gods, goddesses, and food, food, food.
"My artist went on to become quite famous," Carli says, proud that his art man is now in Washington, D.C., re-creating the haunting murals of the Villa dei Misteri for the Georgetown villa of an American plutocrat.
Despite the quality of both the art and the food, it took Il Principe five years to catch on. "There was no real food culture in Pompeii," Carli recalls. "Everyone ate the same things all the time - spaghetti, and fish - but there was no awareness of the history "That changed in 1991 when Carli catered a special meal for the executives of RAI, the Italian state broadcasting authoriry. "A Dinner in the Shadow of Vesuvius" showcased a meal of ancient Roman dishes. At the time, such dishes were not on the menu of Il Principe - no one would have ordered them - but the RAI dinner was so successful and, because it was a media group, generated so much buzz that Carli began to rethink and to challenge modern Pompeii's entrenched dining habits.
Last one think that Carli's task was simply serving a slightly different variety of Italian food to ltalians, it's important to understand how drastically different the food of Italy is from the food of
the Roman Empire. "There were no tomatoes, no potatoes, no
corn - that all came 1500 years later from the New World. There
was no sugar no coffee, no cocoa," continues Carli, who has become
a true food historian. "They didn't use lemons in cooking. Lemons
were only for medicine. There were no oranges. They came much
later from the Arabs."
So what was there? Lots of vegetables, Carli says. Spinach, escarole,
artichokes, cabbage. Lamb, pork, and game, simply boiled or grilled, were main dishes, but never steak. "Cows were for work," Carli notes. Nor was there any cow's milk. "Milk came from sheep, cheese from goats," Carli continues. Shellfish were very popular, especially among the rich, who prized Tunisian prawns above all other crustacea. The prime condiment was garum, a salty fish sauce, and the prime cooking fat was olive oil. Garlic was ubiquitous.
"The roots of the modern Italian palate were all there," says Carli, who believes that anyone who likes Italian food will not find the flavors of Pompeiian cuisine all that alien or at all alienating. Moreover, Carli is a dissenter from the school of those who think Italians never ate pasta before Marco Polo brought back noodles from China. A great delicacy Carli maintains, was lagane, a cereal product that evolved into lasagna. Macaroni, he concedes, was a gift - not of
the Chinese, but of 12th century Arabs. In any event, at the new Pompeii Principe, pasta will be part of the menu. Wìne, which was  drunk only at dinner and in gargantuan amounts, was quite different in ancient times, mixed with honey as an aperitif or diluted with water and flavored with herbs. "Only vandals drank their wine straight," Carli says. Honeyed wine , cooked wine, garum, and other imperial delicacies, which Carli hopes will eventually return to the national larder, will be on sale in his new restaurant's gift shop.

As for his current restaurant, "Foreigners made it a success," Carli observes. Despite such triumphs as Carli's RAI dinner and his growing reputation as a savant, the locals had little interest in Il Principe, preferring their classic, traditional trattorias. Undaunted, Carli headed for the gates of the ruins and handed out multilingual brochures to American, Japanese, and German tourists, who heeded Carli's call and packed his house. By the time Il Principe earned its Michelin star in 1998, Carli had cooked a Roman dinner for Bill
Clinton at the White House. The George Bushes, père et fils, had eaten vermicelli with garum under Carli's murals. He knew politicians. He was ready to push for his grand design. "Three million visitors a year come to Pompeii," Carli says, "and they have nothing to eat." So he went to visit the city manager and the archaeological superintendent of the ruins with his plan "to do something for my city If I were interested in big business, I'd have taken Il Principe to NewYork or Tokyo. But this is a labor of love." 'What Carli was suggesting was to convert a small villa near the amphitheater to a restaurant with 5o to 6o covers. It would be casual ("no one dresses to go to the ruins") and half the price of Il Principe, where a typical dinner costs uS. $75 to $95. Carli estimates that the startup costs of his Pompeii dream were a capital investment of around U.S. $500,000.
While the politicians in Pompeii gave their adoptive hometown oy an immediate green light, the powers in Rome kept unplugging it, until the election of media mogul Silvio Berlusconi. "He's very good for cultural sites," Carli says. The only issue that remains at this point is the term of Carli's lease on the Pompeii villa. "They started by offering me four years. I need 20. But we'll work it out," he says confidently.
Meanwhile, Carli has been busy buying new, fancier china and silverware for his flagship in his effort to earn a second Michelin star. He's found a mosaic of the women of Pompeii rolling out lagane that he wants to reproduce. Not that I1 Principe is limited to a wholly ancient Roman repertoire. Carli's chefs turn out fabulous spaghetti alle vongole, luscious tomato sauces, crisp rosemary potatoes, and divine chocolate cakes. However deliciously piquant garum might be, it's still a bit hard to imagine the Italian table devoid of the fusion ingredients discovered by Columbus and company "Tomato, tomahto, potato, potahto..." Because Carli would never call the whole thing off, we can look forward to the next days of Pompeii and a potential new food trend that might end up the Cajun, the Latino, or the Pacific Rim fare of the new millennium.

by Wìlliam Stadiem is a Los Angeles-based novelist and screenwriter
who travels the world looking for the best restaurants and hotels.

Published in "Food Art" - May 2002