Flying in the face of inflation, rising housing prices, and the possibly of a recession, London’s hot new restaurant Bacchanalia Mayfair offers a decadent taste of ancient Rome in one of the city’s richest neighborhoods.

“You can either recoil at the cartoonish debauchery of it all — or surrender to this immersive production and snap some selfies, along with everyone else,” as The New York Times puts it, in the article “Recession? What Recession? Pass Me Some Grapes.”

Billionaire restauranteur and club owner Richard Caring is the brains behind this bold, over-the-top dare. Caring is also the owner of Annabel’s, a private member club with six restaurants known for attracting oligarchs, petrogarchs, and hedge fund managers.

On the restaurant’s opening night on Nov. 17, 2022, Caring made a speech before his guests, starting, “The last guy that made a speech in these sorts of surroundings started with, ‘Friends, Romans, and countrymen,’” quoting Mark Antony in “Julius Ceasar.”

At that point in Shakespeare’s play, Ceasar was dead.

Despite the U.K.’s painful double-digit cost of living crisis, strikes by ambulance drivers and transportation workers and, like the U.S., recession fears, Caring said he wanted Bacchanalia to be a haven for conspicuous consumption, an escape for anyone who can afford it — excess and gluttony be damned.

By coincidence, Bacchanalia’s opening night, Nov. 17, was the same day that Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced $30 billion in tax increases and $35 billion in spending cuts.

Bacchanalia’s menu offers a lobster pasta for $162 and the Freddo Tequila, coffee and banana cocktail for $31. A slice of tiramisu costs $42.

“Is it a toga too far?” Caring asked the crowd.

“No!” they screamed back.