A building on the site was first licensed in 1311 and there are records of beer being brewed there in 1636. The present structures are 17th-century.Dining at the Elizabeth was a demanding experience. You climbed the narrow stairs to be greeted at the top by Antonio – and a fug of tobacco smoke plus the spirituous fumes of port and brandy. In the evening the rooms were dark, lit chiefly by the reflections of candles in the dark brown, highly polished tables, with their starched ivory-coloured linen placemats and napkins. Silver and crystal shimmered on the tables and from the serving stations, and there were always fresh flowers. The solicitous waiting staff, once almost entirely Spanish, and latterly about half Spanish, followed Antonio's unobsequious lead and knew exactly how to flatter and please the young bucks and affluent young women who made up much of the clientele.In my experience it was rare to leave the Elizabeth without having consumed more drink than usual. This, and the opulence of the food, meant that many diners had more trouble getting down the stairs than when they had gone up them.

Indeed, the penultimate time I ate there (more than 25 years ago), it was to go feet first to the old Radcliffe Infirmary, where I spent the night recovering from a dramatic allergic reaction to what Antonio and I later decided must have been penicillin (illicitly given to the cow, as farmers sometimes did in the bad old days) in the cream that was (gratuitously, I thought) garnishing my perfectly cooked steak.But then, Antonio Lopez's food, cooked for the past 20 years by his chef Salvador Rodriguez, was the epitome of richness. The menu doesn't appear to have changed one jot in nearly 40 years (except for the disappearance of ttoro, the Basque fish soup many people ordered simply to find out what it was). For many Oxford men, our first taste of piperade, the Basque dish of egg, peppers and tomatoes, was at the Elizabeth. (Though he had absolutely no connection with the Basque country, the preponderance of Basque dishes reflected Lopez's very Spanish belief that the cooking of northern Spain was more refined than that of the south.)The remainder of the menu was French – sort of. Taramasalata was never absent and the garlicky starter of prawns with rice and aioli must have raised many a French visitor's eyebrow, but nobody could fault the chicken liver p?, the escargots or the quenelles Sauce Nantua (though they were more often of salmon than pike).Main courses were beyond old-fashioned. If you wanted something light there were two choices, the saumon au vin blanc or supr? de volaille au vin blanc.

Otherwise you were condemned to a beef-heavy choice of a generous hunk of filet or entrec?maison au poivre vert, Ch?aubriand, boeuf Stroganoff, supr? de canard ?'orange, or carr?'agneau dauphinoise. Though there were one or two puddings without cream, most customers will always remember the Elizabeth for the cr? br? and the unnervingly substantial candied chestnuts.The fragrance of brewing coffee added to the heady mixture of aromas of the dining room, for the coffee was made at table, in a Cona apparatus that, appropriately for Oxford, looked like a piece of equipment from the chemistry lab. An open glass bowl containing ground coffee surmounted another bowl filled with water, which was boiled over something like a Bunsen burner. When the water was boiled, the flame was removed, and the water whooshed up into the top bowl, slowly trickling down – now as coffee – into the bottom, which had a pouring handle.The buzz of the rooms owed not a little to the consumption of alcohol – many were the dinners that began with sherry and ended with port, cognac or eau-de-vie.