El Charoles, El Escorial

I've never been given a screwdriver at the end of a meal before. This one was pretty good. It had a Philips head screwdriver of two different sizes  that were easily interchangeable and one of whatever the other kind of screwdriver is called. I have no idea what it's called but its pretty useful. Thinking about it I don't actually know which one is a Philips head at all and which is the other kind whose name I don't know. Before I get too bogged down in this I'll get back to the point, which is that it is a pretty weird present after you've just eaten a big piece of beef. This was the second surprise of the afternoon. The first was at the restaurant was any good at all give it was planted firmly on the tourist trail. Having said that, things here are are markedly less touristy than in Segovia where an incredible piece of suckling pig made me remark something quite similar. Pig didn't feature in lunch this time, however.  Here the name of the game was steak.



And what a steak it was; a massive slab of meat cut into slices served rare crispy on the outside without any of the overburnt charring, lovely flavoursome fat ringing it and having been cooked enough to be soft and melting round the wonderfully flavoured meat. Potatoes weren't amazing and there was no gravy, but who cares the star of the show was the beef; basically it was the show so I suppose that's obvious. But it was the definitely kind of star that would get an encore and have to take several bows amongst rapturous applause at the end of the end of the big musical number.

There's also a good bar round the corner, nuff said. If you're in Escorial eat here.