WITHIN just two minutes of kick-off on Saturday, England’s footballers at Wembley conceded a goal to the Spanish and were in danger of getting stuffed.
We were nearly 90 minutes in front of Harry Kane’s men. Our encounter with the Spanish in Bishop Auckland had reached the final whistle – we were served with our bill just as the alert on my phone said the first goal had gone in.
El Castillo is in the Market Place, almost facing The Auckland Project’s new hotel which is rising behind the hoardings. It is next to the Spanish Gallery, which draws people from all over the world to marvel at the brushwork of artists such as El Greco, although I must admit I prefer the footwork of Lamine Yamal and the midfield artistry of Rodri.
It is a tapas restaurant, serving small, shareable plates of different tastes, and using as many ingredients as possible from the walled garden at Auckland Palace.
The trouble with tapas is that it can be difficult for everyone around a table to agree on which dishes to order. A single diner can probably eat about three plates but most people will fancy five or six on the menu.
My meaty choices rarely coincide with my wife’s vegetarian preferences, so there is plenty of scope for argument as we try to hone down our 12 fancies into a six slot starting formation: some carbohydrates at the back to tackle the hunger, vegetables in midfield and an exciting frontline of as many interesting protein dishes as possible to attack the tastebuds.
We’d taken along our daughter, Genevieve, and son, Theo, so we could have even more choices, but before the negotiations could begin in earnest, we spotted the “plato de tapas mixta para compartir” – a sharing board for two made up of six dishes for £45 (£54.50 if you had ordered them separately).
That, therefore, made up the bulk of order with a few fancies around the side.
We were told that because of a large party upstairs, service might be unusually long, but the first tapas arrived in under 15 minutes and then there was a steady flow.
Unfortunately for Petra, my wife, the first three dishes were the belly pork, the albondigas (meatballs) and the patatas bravas, so she just had a few small cubes of potatoes to eat while we enthused about the meat.
The belly pork in a cider, honey and chilli sauce (Image: Chris Lloyd)
The albondigas in a rich tomato sauce with cheese melted on top were smoky and good, but the pork, in a cider, honey and chilli sauce, was excellent. The top was crispy without threatening to break my ageing teeth, while the meat beneath just fell away into the sauce.
The albondigas - meatballs in a rich tomato and cheese sauce (Image: Chris Lloyd)
Then the bulk of the sharing platter arrived and we were suddenly overwhelmed with food.
The sharing platter-cum-cake stand was a great space-saving device on an over-crowded table (Image: Chris Lloyd)
It wasn’t so much a platter as a three tiered cake stand with croquetas and tortilla up top, chorizo with figs in the middle, and prawns and calamari down below.
The tortilla was fairly boring but I enjoyed the “croquetas del huerto”, which had a mushy centre of garden vegetables in cheese and garlic aioli. Often croquettes are a bland mash of potato but these had a real reward in the middle – Petra, though, thought it was a bit too much.
Moving down the field to the middle plate, the sweetness of the figs took away the strident nature of the chorizo, and then everyone agreed the prawns were big and fat and juicy, although I thought the sauce – garlic and chilli – was more Asian than Spanish.
The deep fried calamari were dismissed by everyone else as too rubbery but I thought they were rather nice dipped in some of the extravagant sauces that were going spare.
The aubergine fritters - one disappeared before the photo could be taken (Image: Chris Lloyd)
As well as the platter, we’d ordered aubergine fritters (£7) which, despite my initial scepticism, I came to really enjoy: deep fried, battered slices of aubergine, each the size of an Olympic medal, in a rich tomato sauce and oozing honey. Genevieve couldn’t handle the concept, Petra thought that the honey made them a bit fatty but I liked this imaginative approach to a vegetable.
The aubergine fritters - one disappeared before the photo could be taken (Image: Chris Lloyd)
We also had a “Parmo Espanol” (£10) which was a Spanish take on the Teesside delicacy, with chicken thighs in that rich red romesco sauce topped with Manchego cheese. It was pleasant enough but it didn’t have the impact of the belly pork or the chorizo and figs.
But tapas means that if one dish doesn’t work for you then you can move onto the next.
There were desserts for about £7 each, but we were warned there might be a delay and they had run out of crema catalana, so we went straight for coffees (£4 each) although Genevieve had a Spanish hot chocolate (£4.50) with a hint of chilli in it. The chilli wasn’t hot but it really woke the chocolate up in the way salt enhances caramel.
During our meal, three of us had had non-alcoholic cocktails, which were a very unnecessary extravagance at £7 each. The Walled Garden Spritz was made of seasonal red fruits but all I could taste was the fizzy lemonade so it was disappointing, but Theo’s Elderflower Fizz was so vibrant and tasty he allowed me no more than a little sip.
The £38 of drinks (although we did get a free jug of water) pushed our bill to £119.50.
The sharing platter-cum-cakestand was a good value way of grazing around the menu.
We each had our favourites: Genevieve the patatas bravas, Petra the prawns, Theo the meatballs and me the belly pork. Although I also liked the aubergine and the oozy croquetas and the prawns were good and the figs worked well with the chorizo and even the calamari softened up nicely in the leftover sauces…
I got home in time to watch the second half of the match and see England lose narrowly by three goals to two – they had escaped being as badly beaten as I feared when the first goal had gone in after two minutes, and it was I who had ended up getting stuffed by the Spanish.
El Castillo, Bishop Auckland (Image: Chris Lloyd)
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EL Castillo, Market Place, Bishop Auckland DL14 7NJ
Tel: 01388-600530
Web: aucklandproject.org
Ratings
Food quality 8
Surroundings 7
Service 8
Value for money 8