The banquet, explained
Dinner with no knife, no fork, and no spoon
Why the banquet at Castillo San Miguel is eaten entirely by hand, what's actually on the three courses, and how to handle a vegetarian booking.
See Castillo San Miguel tickets on GetYourGuide ↗The three courses
| Course | What it is | How you eat it |
|---|---|---|
| First | Cream of vegetable soup | Drunk straight from the bowl |
| Main | Roast chicken leg, baked potato | Pulled apart and eaten by hand |
| Dessert | Ice-cream cake, chocolate syrup | By hand, or with the cake fork if one's offered |
| Throughout | Bread, wine, water, soft drinks | Included and topped up through the meal — beer costs extra |
No cutlery is the whole point
Nobody hands you a knife, fork or spoon anywhere in the banquet hall at Castillo San Miguel — it's a deliberate piece of staging built into the format from the start, not a service oversight or a budget cut. The idea is to strip away the usual table manners of a modern restaurant dinner and make the meal feel like a genuine part of the medieval tournament rather than a polite interval between the show elements. It works better in practice than it sounds like it should on paper, and most tables of strangers are laughing about it together within the first few minutes of the soup arriving.
The soup is the strangest course by some distance
Course one is a cream of vegetable soup, and with no spoon anywhere on the table, the only way to drink it is straight from the bowl, tipped up like a cup. It's the course almost every first-time visitor hesitates over for a second before committing, and consistently the one that gets the biggest laugh from the rest of the table once everyone at your section is doing it at roughly the same time. If you're self-conscious about table manners, this is the moment to let that go for the evening — everyone else in the room is in exactly the same position.
The chicken is the main event, and it's generous
The centrepiece of the banquet is a whole roast chicken leg served with a baked potato and a dressed tomato, torn apart and eaten entirely with your hands, the way it would genuinely have been eaten at a large medieval feast. Portions are hearty rather than delicate — this is food built to fuel a long, loud, physical evening rather than a plated fine-dining course meant to be admired before it's touched. Expect to leave with slightly greasy fingers and, most reviewers report, a full stomach; napkins are provided in quantity, which tells you everything about the intended eating style.
Vegetarian and other dietary requirements
A vegetarian option — typically a lasagne — is available for guests who don't eat meat, and other dietary requirements can usually be accommodated by the kitchen with enough notice. Because this is a fixed banquet built for close to a thousand guests on a tournament night rather than an à la carte kitchen taking individual orders, the right way to handle any requirement is to flag it in the comments field at the time you make your booking, not to mention it when you sit down at the table. That gives the kitchen the lead time it actually needs to prepare an alternative rather than improvise one on the spot.
Drinks run all evening, not just alongside the food
Wine, water and soft drinks are included and topped up continuously through the whole night rather than rationed to the meal itself, and a basket of bread sits on the table from the moment you're seated at the gate, well before the tournament or the first course arrives. Between the drinks flowing freely, three full courses, and a tournament running in parallel to watch between bites, the two-and-a-half to three-hour running time tends to pass quickly — few guests report leaving hungry, or particularly thirsty, by the time the dancing starts. Beer is not part of the drinks package — it is sold separately by the bottle or the bucket, so budget for it if beer is what you drink.