HE CAME, he saw, he conquered. Well, he called the landlord and took over the lease.

Whichever way you look back on the fateful day Anthony Pulsford first strode past an empty shop on Royal Wootton Bassett High Street, and dreamt up what would became Casa de Pico, one thing is for certain, he did not waste a second.

“I moved to Bassett from Brinkworth last July and I kept walking past this place - it was The Starfish – which was empty at the time,” said Anthony, better known as Spike courtesy of his eye-catching prickly hairstyle (“When I moved to Brinkworth 11 years ago the villagers called me Spike and it stuck,” he laughs).

This moniker inspired the restaurant’s name, Casa de Pico, loosely translated as House of Spike.

“Opening a restaurant had never crossed my mind before. But I had been to a few tapas restaurants – they were always busy. I frequented Los Gatos in Old Town quite a lot and I started thinking that Bassett needed something more high end and special.

“I’m quite impulsive but I think you have to be in life. Once I got the keys there was no going back. I’m glad I took the plunge.”

He embarked on a race against the clock over the next few weeks to refurbish the decrepit and mold-ridden venue. From recarpeting, to painting and building a bar –Spike tackled the overhaul largely on his own. But he wisely left plastering and electricity to the professionals.

“We got the keys on February 1 and opened on April 1,” recalls Spike, who trained in arts and graphics before moving to Brinkworth and taking on the role of groundkeeper at Woodbridge Park.

“When I got the keys it was derelict. It had been empty for the best part of a year; the kitchen ceiling was on the floor. But I wasn’t afraid to tackle the work. I was really looking forward to decorating. I had a pretty good idea of how it would look in my mind.

“It was a lot more hectic than sitting on a mower cutting grass, I will give you that. But it’s been very exciting.”

The refurbishment followed a week of intense food sampling in Spain for Spike and his right-hand woman and manager-to-be Clare Butcher. “We went to Malaga in November for research, let’s call it that. We went to a lot of tapas restaurants to get a feel, see if we could learn anything.”

Back in the UK, the pair even enrolled in a cookery course at Rusland in Haydon Wick, to get to grips with the subtleties of Spanish gastronomy.

The building finally in shape, came the venture’s one and only hurdle: the scarcity of competent and inventive Spanish-born chefs in Swindon and Wiltshire. There was never any question of recruiting a British chef to run a tradition Iberian kitchen.

Through sheer determination and thanks to the wonders of social media, Clare came upon two chefs – one of them actually based a few miles away in Swindon- on Facebook.

Ruben Ortega, a Madrilenian chef working in Reading, and Granada- born Sebastian Jimenez, the former chef at The Spotted Cow in Coate, joined the restaurant two weeks before its inauguration.

“We tried the Job Centre, caterer.com and Monster but it didn’t work,” she explains. “It got a bit stressful. I joined every Spanish group I could find on Facebook, from Glasgow to Bilbao. Eventually I put an advert and we found Sebastian through Españoles enSwindon and Ruben on Españoles en Reading. We were looking around the world and they were around the corner. It was a relief to find them.”

Spike adds: “We wanted it to be a traditional tapas restaurant- without Spanish chefs we would not have come close. Attention to detail is very important. Their background was cooking tapas with their parents. They are amazing and they were keen to work in their own kitchen. . They are so enthusiastic and always coming up with new specials.”

“Clare and I had an idea of what we what we liked; we didn’t want a massive menu. We put together the menu and the boys tweaked it. They are chefs; they know what works and what doesn’t.”

Among the firm favourites with customers are gambas pil pil, chorizo and albondigas. As well as tapas, customers can enjoy live music every fortnight.

“I just wanted a nice little bar and restaurant where people could come sit down, relax, enjoy a bottle of wine with nice Spanish music in the background and live music,” says Spike. “I’m proud of what we’ve achieved. I wanted somewhere traditional with a great feel. But it had to be high end. We didn’t want sombreros and donkeys, like in a tourist attraction.”

Spike hopes to make use of the large garden to hold barbecues this summer.

While ‘quietly confident’ the tapas bar would entice a few customers, the restaurant’s success has been quite beyond his expectations.

“I didn’t have any doubt it would be busy. You have to be positive. But I suppose I am a bit surprised. We have made it look great, the service is amazing and everybody in the restaurant is happy. My thinking was, if I surround myself with the right people and make it look how I want it to, it will be fairly successful.”

Casa de Pico is located at 152a High Street in Royal Wootton Bassett. It is open from Tuesday to Saturday between 11.30am and 11pm (tapas are served between 12pm and 2.30pm and again from 6pm to 9.30pm) and on Sunday from 11.30am to 10pm (food is served between 12pm and 5pm). For more information call 01793 850574 or visit www.casadepicotapasbar.com.