Pubs and restaurants have jumped on the Spanish bandwagon with the enthusiasm of Antonio Banderas leaping into Catherine Zeta Jones’ bedroom window, serving pretty much anything on a small plate and calling it tapas.

Thus, tapas has become something of a dirty word in food circles, thanks to its monumental overuse and inaccurate description.

One local restaurant owner I know has taken the word tapas off his menus, so misconstrued is the term now.

However, impervious and oblivious to the fuss, sits the old man of tapas, the Kaz Bar, who not only introduced and then rode the trend, but now bucks it as well.

Because while good, bad and indifferent attempts float around it like flotsam, The Cowley Road stalwart continues to serve irresistible Spanish food , as it has always done, calmly and brilliantly.

Which is why we washed up there recently, hoping it hadn't been too affected by recent culinary developments while continuing to set the pace.

But first we stopped of at it's sister restaurant Café Tarifa, previously a trendy bar, and now serving more of a seaside light-hearted menu of brunch, fish and burgers, so I must return soon for more of a culinary appraisal. but in the meantime we setlled for a well earned al fresco cocktail amid the balmy weather and buzzing atmosphere.

Peeling ourselves away and crossing the road, we then entered the more exotic, yellow-washed walls of the Kaz Bar, sampled a fantastic Moroccan Iced Tea (Iced mint tea, Absolut Vodka, lemon juice, sugar, sprigs of mint) and then sat at a vast sunken table which everyone crowded round and ordered a few dishes that took their fancy.

It meant we had a vast array of tiny plates on the table to nibble at and sample, pass around, try and experiment, all washed down with some top notch sangria.

Most of the table hadn’t visited before and had no idea what a feast they could expect, so I could only watch in delight as they sampled the potatoes slow roasted with chorizo, onion and parsley or the exquisite Duroc black pig cheeks, slow cooked in Mayador cider which have been haunting their dreams ever since.

Then some Iberian pork ribs, oven roasted with cracked pepper and sea salt, a portion of slow cooked lamb in a herb and lemon sauce with butternut squash and peas, a dish of spiced beef and pork meatballs in a sherry, tomato and paprika sauce, some free range chicken wings, cooked in a lemon, honey, garlic and chilli to nibble on, all for around the £4 mark. Find one you like you can always order more, as I did with the chorizo, because everything turns up very quickly.

The babaganoush dip with pitta was as smoky and smooth as I'd hoped, the manchego cheese marinated in spiced olive oil and served with quince jelly was immediately nabbed by someone at the end of the table who then refused to share it, the creamy blue mountain cheese had us all in heaven, the prawn tails cooked in a chilli, garlic & herb butter spiced things up a bit, as did the sliced octopus, served with new potatoes, red onion, paprika and olive oil which converted the unconvertable and the old favourites; some Boquerones,braised butternut squash, chickpeas and harissa and the Pimientos Piquillo con Alcachofas, a warm salad of oak-roasted peppers, chargrilled baby artickoke and goat's cheese. Salivating yet?

And yet the atmosphere is as important to the general bonhomie as the food at The Kaz Bar, shadows being cast on the wall, guitar music playing, the contents of the table ebbing and flowing, customers chatting, eating, flirting, laughing and drinking, all aided and abetted by the wonderful staff, managed by the-life-and-soul-of-the-party Fabrizio.

It’s a convivial sort of place and unsurprisingly one that everyone else would like to emulate. But they’ve forgotten that there’s only one Kaz Bar, and it’s still reigning supreme.

Kaz Bar 25-27 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 1HP. 01865 202920. www.kazbar.co.uk/contact