What is the latin word for Roman take-out restaurant and bar?

Answer 1

The roman equivalent of a takeout joint was the thermpolia. However, it was not a restaurant or bar. It was a bakery. The Romans did not have restaurants. The word was Greek and meant "a place where (something) hot is sold." It sold ready to eat food and it has been considered the forerunner of restaurants and the food they served had been compared to today's fast food. It served the poor who did not have a private kitchen. It had a counter at the front with recesses for heat efficient containers. Many had dining areas at the back. However, most people eat their food on benches along the sidewalk.

Most Romans lived on the upper floors of the insulae (apartment blocks four to seven floors high) which had small and overcrowded rooms with no running water, cooking facility or toilets. People went there only to sleep and lived outdoors. They went to outdoors public toilets and to the public baths and eat outdoors. Bread and other grain based foods were all that the poor could afford. Therefore, the bakeries were the places where the food they ate was made and sold. The bakeries were extremely busy and, due to the masses of customers, people ate siting on outdoors benches. The thermopoliae were scorned by the upper classes who had a kitchen in their domus (detached house).

Nowadays the word tavern is usually used in reference to the ancient Roman bars. However, the use of the word tavern for a drinking place is more recent. In ancent Rome a taberna (plural tabernae) was a shop. There was also the taberna diversoria, or simply diversorium, but these were inns along the Roman Roads.

The Romans had wine bars called popina (plural popinae). This served wine and simple foods such as olives, bread and stew. They were frequented by plebeians, slaves, freedmen and foreigners. They were simple places and had stools and tables. There was no eating reclined here. This was an aristocratic custom. In the literature (which was written by aristocrats) the popina was described as a place of immoral and illicit behaviour, crime and violence. There were attempts to curb the popinae. Tiberius forbade the sale of cooked food. Claudius ordered their closing down, but this failed. Nero ordered that only some kinds of vegetables and pulses could be sold. Vespasian issued a similar edict. There was gambling with dice at the popinae, even though it was illegal. Abundant archaeological finds of dices confirm this. The popinea were also seen as brothels. However, they did not have separate rooms for sex. Prostitutes went there to pick up punters and took them elsewhere.

There was also the cauponia which, according to one source, differed from the popina in that it offered overnight accommodation.