The Kings Balti

The King's Balti holds a Newgate Street pitch in the southern run of independent food shops between Bishop Auckland's town centre and the railway. The kitchen runs an unusually broad curry-house menu — the standard tandoori starter range and balti dishes built around a house special-balti sauce the shop claims uses more than twenty herbs and spices, alongside the biryani range with the flavoured basmati, sultanas and cashew nuts that mark a proper biryani out from the rice-on-the-side imitation. The chef's specials sit across the full heat range from mild korma up to very hot phall-style preparations, with set meals priced for groups of one to four that pull in family-sized weekend orders. Halal handling and the food-hygiene five rating add to the shop's catchment, and reviewer feedback on TripAdvisor and Yelp is genuinely mixed — strong praise for the biryani and the king-prawn-on-puri starter set against inconsistent service feedback that is the typical pattern for a small kitchen running the full curry-house range. The shop trades from early evening through to ten every day. Online ordering is handled through the shop's own sites at thekingsbalti.co.uk and thekingsbalti.com alongside Foodhub.