You may have noticed the rise and rise of the wine bar. Recently I reviewed Dax and today it's Dowling's. That's not because I'm going out looking for wine bars, it's just that there's a growing trend towards them and they're out there in growing numbers. There's even one in Dublin with the Italian name, 'enoteca', which is based on the Italian model.

What you may not know is that much of what appears on menus is dictated not by the owners of the food outlets, but by the regional health boards. To protect you and me, the health inspectors - whose job is to police the cleanliness of restaurant kitchens - not only check up on general levels of hygiene, but enforce rules on what can and what cannot be served. A kitchen that prepares food using raw ingredients comes under a different set of guidelines than those that simply serve ready-made foods. For a start, a kitchen that prepares food needs to be big in size and it needs to comply with a raft of EU legislation, ranging from food storage to preparation to purchasing. Needless to say that's a major expense in setting up a restaurant, but if instead you want to open a sandwich bar, or a wine bar, the regulations are fewer and less expensive to implement.

The key word that governs these rules is 'traceablility'. There has to be a clear chain tracing how the food got from the raw state to your plate. If the preparation of food is carried out on the premises, that preparation has to follow the same regulations that it does in commercial factories. What this means in practice is that small kitchens simply don't have the space to comply with the regulations. In these cases they are obliged to buy in processed foods, for example commercially available soups, rather than make their own.

If, however, you have a sandwich bar or a wine bar, then you can serve food even from a small kitchen, as long as it's not cooked on the premises. The kitchen becomes merely a dispensary, where pre-prepared food is assembled onto plates. That's what ultimately dictates what's on the menu.

I went to meet my friends Gill Hall and Mairead Conlon in Dowling's, which occupies the premises that was the butcher's shop of the same name in Baggot Street. They'd just been to the Interiors exhibition in the RDS, so it was a handy place to meet. Like many buildings of its age, it's long and thin. There's a bar counter running down the left-hand side as you walk in and there's a couple more sitting areas beyond that towards the back. I took a trip to the loo and found large and spacious loos. Before you get to them you'll pass the kitchen, which you'll find is about the size of a broom cupboard. This then, is what dictates its menu.

We were sitting at the window table and our waiter handed us the menu, which has a page or two of food on offer, and a dozen pages of wines. The first two pages are of 'wines by the glass', divided into red, white and rosé. What you need to know is that a 'glass' in Dowling's is not a mean little 6oz goblet, but is the equivalent of a quarter bottle, so a glass of wine at €6 is better value than it looks at first sight. Even the remaining ten pages, listing wines from all around the world, offer the majority by the glass, so the choice by the glass is huge. The bulk of the wines listed are priced between €20 and €40, and after a great deal of prevarication I eventually settled on a the Vidal Estate Riesling from New Zealand's Marlborough region at €27, which was truly delicious. We also ordered a bottle of sparkling water, but were told it was sold out. Gill said 'but there's a Tesco next door', and our helpful waiter took the cue and came back in a moment with a big bottle of water for us.

Gill had been to Dowling's before and so had prior knowledge of the potato cakes. so they were the first thing we ordered. Because the food menu is mostly snacky things, we picked out quite a lot of different things - a mixed platter of meats and cheeses, the mixed tapas plate (which included the potato cakes), a goats' cheese salad, and the chorizo baguette. 'I hope you're hungry', said our waiter, 'that's a lot of food.' He was right, when all of that plus the breads and bits arrived our table was covered with food.

Just as Gill had said, the potato cakes were very tasty. Mairead had the goats' cheese salad which was plentiful and good, while I picked my through most of the mixed platter, which had a lot of prosciutto, various salamis, three cheeses in slices and a big helping of creamy paté. We didn't make much of an inroad into either the chorizo baguettes or the mixed tapas plate. The net result of this is that three people ended up with more food than we could eat for €35, the rest of the final bill of €77.40 being made up of wine, coffees and water.

Like most wine bars, Dowling's is the sort of place that's perfect for dropping into for a quick glass of wine and a snack. Simple and tasty tit-bits, plus a well-chosen wine list make it a welcome addition to the growing number of wine bars.