Jaw-dropping: the extraordinary interiors at Baccahanalia
(Picture: Johnny Stephens/Caprice Holdings)The first thing to say about Bacchanalia, Richard Caring’s all-new, marble-carved middle finger to restraint and propriety, is that it is not the tacky, high-profile calamity that many detractors might be anticipating. There will, I’m afraid, be no feast here for schadenfreude fans. If your chief interest in this place — with its 2,000-year-old pieces of art, quintet of bespoke, neo-classical Damien Hirst sculptures and tittering pre-launch job ads for in-house grape-feeders — is the promise of gawping at an extravagant binfire then, well, you are mostly out of luck.
Yes, there are misfires among its sprawling repertoire of big-ticket Greco-Roman sharing platters. Yes, the waitstaff have to wear lightly demeaning swishy, servants’ togas like attendees at a billionaire’s I, Claudius-themed sex party. But from the moment that you step, utterly agog, into its colonnaded hall of rippling stone, triple-height frescoed ceilings, and serpentine wall sconces in glittering alcoves, this place is a study in richly textured, operatic escapism.
