Acqualina resurrects two millennia of culinary dialogue between Rome and the East

Lamb braised in a pan, kissed by flame and wrapped in spinach leaf, arrives at table with its sauce of milk, star anise and cinnamon. Alongside it sits a cream of celeriac and leek, a compote of smoked dates, and a powder of burnt leek. The plate, austere and composed on natural clay, tells a story that begins two thousand years before it was conceived.

In Apicius’s De re coquinaria, the oldest Roman cookbook to survive antiquity, lamb prepared “alla partica” appears among the recipes that shaped imperial dining. The technique married Rome’s culinary authority with the spice forward traditions of Parthia, the ancient Eastern empire that stood as Rome’s rival across the centuries. What emerged was not conquest but conversation: a permanent exchange of flavour and method that would echo through the Mediterranean world.

The dish now rests on the Sedimenti menu at Acqualina Ristorante, where chef Daniele Lippi draws from this dialogue with the precision of an archaeologist and the intuition of an artist. The lamb’s flesh becomes tender through pan cooking before the char of the grill seals its surface. Spinach enfolds it like an ancient manuscript. The sauce of milk and warm spices evokes the trade routes and merchant ships; the burnt leek powder adds a contemporary note of restraint and discipline. Celeriac cream and smoked dates complete the composition, each element placed with intention rather than abundance.

To eat this dish is to taste time itself: not merely the flavours that Rome borrowed from the East, but the moment when two culinary worlds chose to recognise themselves in one another. It is history served on a plate of unglazed clay, quiet and commanding.

Imagery courtesy of Acqualina Ristorante (@acquolinaristorante).