At Jamon Jamon we simply serve original Spanish food made in the traditional style of a Spanish Tapas Bar.

Tapas is a traditional type of snack served throughout Spain and is typically eaten as a light meal during the day or as a prelude to an evening out, providing diners with an assortment of flavours.

Tapas incorporates a range of ingredients from different countries and cultures, including:

• The Romans, who introduced olives,
  
• The Moors in the 8th century, who brought pungent spices, almonds and citrus fruits,
  
• The discovery of the New Worlds brought with it potatoes, beans, tomatoes and chilli peppers.

However, no one really knows how Tapas began, but there are three main theories. These include:

• King Alfonso the 10th (1252 to 1284) also known as Alfonso the Wise, whose reign is remembered as a period of lavish patronage of education and scholarship, and who is also remembered for the medical advice he was given to take small bites of food with some wine between meals. Following his recovery, Alfonso is supposed to have decreed that all the inns in the land of Castile were to serve small portions of food with wine.
  
• Then there is the theory of Andalusian natural selection. In Andalusia, the inn owners would cover the wine glasses with a plate to protect them from small flies. The inn owners wife�fs then started to prepare small sample dishes which were placed on the Tapas or covering. The idea spread and soon all the inns were competing with each other to prepare increasingly elaborate and tasty dishes.
  
• Finally, there is the idea that Tapas emerged in agricultural regions as a light snack that allowed people to carry on working, rather than stopping for a midday meal.

Whatever its origins, Tapas spread through the Spanish mainland and is now becoming equally as popular in London and the UK.