Reddit reviews Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens

Honestly, I'm not sure. It's really hard to figure that stuff out without writing, because spices aren't used in enough bulk to leave traces that we can find archaeologically, in most cases. I'm far from an expert on that particularly. I am aware of a study that found garlic mustard seeds in Europe approximately 6000 years ago (Saul H, Madella M, Fischer A, Glykou A, Hartz S, Craig OE (2013) Phytoliths in Pottery Reveal the Use of Spice in European Prehistoric Cuisine. PLoS ONE 8(8). They found them in residue on pottery fragments. As study goes on and methods improve to study residues with more regularity, we may find other spices that people used prior to the invention of writing.

I would certainly try a restaurant like that, even if only out of professional curiosity. As a matter of fact, there are several cookbooks that have attempted to reconstruct ancient cuisines:

Delights from the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and a History of the Iraqi Cuisine. This book draws heavily on a number of ancient recipes, including some from cuneiform tablets and tenth century cookbooks.

Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens. This provides some recipes enjoyed from the Roman period as well as some explanations of the food and some of the cultural connotations of the meals.

Perhaps the best-researched one is the one I will leave for last.

A culinary journey through time : a cookery book with recipes from the stone age to the middle ages. This book used actual archaeological findings, rather than textual findings to reconstruct some ancient recipes. Data was derived from methods such as soil samples, paleoethnobotanical research, and other scientific laboratory-based methods.

Ancient Roman cooking had lots of dips and breads, as well as roasts and, indeed, fish sauce. It's remarkable how much Roman cuisine resembles modern-day middle eastern cuisine, for example, in its use of dips. Olives, garlic, and onions were common flavorings, and lentils, chick peas, and beet leaves and other greens, were common as well. Olive oil and wine were ubiquitous. Meat and cheese would have been far scarcer than it is today. AgentPoptart did a fine job of explaining many of the details.

There actually exists a recipe book for Roman cooking available for purchase. An acquaintance of mine who is super hardcore about ancient Rome adapted it and other sources for his own recipe book, which I own in complete form and have somewhere around my house, but since I'm not sure I'd be allowed to share the whole thing, here's my favorite recipe of the lot, a sort of olive tapenade. It goes great on really dense, good bread.

Recipe for Roman Olive Spread ("Epityrum")

Recipe based on Dalby & Grainger, based in turn on Cato's De Agri cultura 119

8 oz olives (any kind, but kalamata are best)
4 tbs red wine vinegar
4 tbs olive oil
1 heaped tsp chopped fennel
2 tsp chopped cilantro
2 tsp chopped rue
3 tsp chopped mint (less if you're using dried mint)
1 tsp cumin

1. In a food processor, chop all the herbs together, as finely as possible.
   
2. Add the liquids and continue chopping.
   
3. Add the olives and chop to desired fineness.
   
4. Serve with bread and cheese.
   
   The dish is said to improve after a night in the fridge. It keeps for a very long time, as long as the solid parts are submerged in the liquid. You can add a bit of olive oil as necessary to keep the solid submerged.
   
   (Edited for formatting. Also, you know what, I'm going to ask this guy if I can scan and post his recipe book. Pending his permission and my ability to find it, I'll post it tomorrow night.)
   
   Edit: I've heard back from my friend, and he doesn't think it's a good idea to throw the recipes up on the internet because they're heavily derived enough from other books that he wants to avoid copyright claims. That being said, here's a few more resources for Roman recipes:
   
   Besides The Classical Cookbook, linked above, there's also Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes for Modern Kitchens, by Mark Grant.
   
   Those who can read Latin can read the ancient recipe book by Apicius here. Most modern readers, however, would probably prefer Apicius: A Critical Edition, or, less expensively, Cooking Apicius: Roman Recipes for Today. There's also a Yahoo mailing list for Roman-style cooking enthusiasts.
   
   A note on fish sauce: my friend notes that liquamen (the general word for fish sauce, garum being a specific and expensive kind) can be easily substituted by using modern South-East Asian fish sauce, but if you can't find that, soy sauce usually does the trick.

Roman cookery by Mark Grant also offers many translations of Apicius.

Other good Roman recipe books for modern tables are A Taste of Ancient Rome - http://www.amazon.com/Taste-Ancient-Ilaria-Gozzini-Giacosa/dp/0226290328 - and Roman Cookery - http://www.amazon.com/Roman-Cookery-Ancient-Recipes-Kitchens/dp/1897959605/ref=pd_sim_b_2.