Roman (God of Fire) officially opens today in downtown Tempe

🔥 The wait is over. At 5 p.m. today, Pretty Decent Concepts throws open the doors for the official grand opening of Roman (God of Fire), the most ambitious project yet from the hospitality group behind local favorites like Wren & Wolf, Trophy Room, Carry On, and Filthy Animal.

After a soft-launch stretch of limited reservations, the 8,000-square-foot temple to wood-fired Italian cooking is ready to welcome the Valley in full.

Roman sits just south of Tempe Town Lake near the northeast corner of Mill Avenue and Rio Salado Parkway in the Hayden Ferry Lakeside development. (A quick heads-up: mapping apps have been known to point diners toward Tempe Beach Park instead, so aim east of Mill.)

Complimentary valet runs Wednesday through Sunday, and there’s four-hour validated parking in the adjacent garage.

The Concept

Founder Teddy Myers built Roman around a simple but ambitious idea: bring the hearth back to the center of the kitchen. The menu leans into wood-fired cooking as both a culinary technique and a bit of theater, pairing prime steaks and seafood roasted over open flame with an extensive house-made pasta program.

Expect Roman-style dishes that go beyond the usual red-sauce playbook – think wood-fired pizza bianca and a carbonara built on guanciale rather than bacon, staying closer to the regional cooking of ancient Rome than the Italian-American standards found on most local menus.

Running the kitchen is chef Scott Conant, a James Beard Award winner and familiar face from Food Network’s “Chopped,” working alongside executive chef Jared Porter and Pretty Decent Concepts culinary director Ivan Gonzalez.

The Room

If the food draws the reservation, the room is what’s going to fill up social media feeds this weekend. Designed by Peter Bowden of Petermax Design, the space channels the grandeur of ancient Rome by way of an old-world cathedral – statues, soaring arches, marble-topped tables, curved booths, and dark wood accents set the stage for what Myers calls a “modern Italian museum” of a dining room.

The goal, by his own description, is to fuse the domestic side of Roman cooking with the wood-fire instincts of a soldier’s camp kitchen – history and hospitality sharing the same flame.

What’s hiding behind the confessional

Roman isn’t just a restaurant – it’s a two-act story. Tucked inside the building is Mea Culpa, a speakeasy-style cocktail lounge accessed through a confessional-style entrance, playing on themes of vice and virtue that run through the whole project.

If Roman is meant to represent virtue, Mea Culpa is its indulgent counterpart, leaning into a modern bar program with a wink toward Italy’s Catholic imagery. It’s set to open separately in September, so consider Friday’s opening the first of two reveals.

Roman is open 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday-Thursday and 11 a.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday.