Zaytinya 2.3

Last week I was dinning in Zaytinya. It is a fairly big restaurant located in DC, right across the MLK memorial Library. My best friend is workingthere now. I decided to take my time and try this restaurant.Zaytinya is Mediterranean restaurant and offers an innovative mezze menu inspired by Turkish, Greek and Lebanese cuisines. This restaurantalways has good ratings for food and service. The owner and the Chef, José Andrés, is very famous, and often shows on TV cooking channels.

Let’s start with design and interior. It is very simple: blue and white colors, glass windows, and wood furniture. This is the best combination for a Mediterranean restaurant. Clean white walls, marble bar, and gorgeous patio.

As far as food goes, Zaytinya is a restaurant that does not offer big large portion meals. It specializes in small tapas pates; people could buy a couple of them and enjoy with their drinks. I ordered 3 small plates.One of them was a dish with different Spreads “Pikilia” and comes with Turkish or Lebanese bread, very soft and hot, right from the oven. The second dish was “Prawn Kishkash”: marinated huge wild prawns, withtomato sauce. And last one was “Knisa Lamb Chops”. Grilled lamb chopswere served over a smoked yogurt and caper-dill salsa. The three items were outstanding in terms of quality of the product.

I was not too crazy about prawns. It was good, but something was wrong with theflavors; maybe tomato sauce was not right combination for it. But myfavorite was Lamb Chops. They were very tender, right temperature, andjust perfect size meal.

To accompany my meal I had their house drink, do not remember thename, but taste and color similar to sangria.

It was very refreshingand not too sweet.My friend was my server, so, service was outstanding too. I had agreat experience at Zaytinya. It is a great place for romanticdates, business meetings and just to hang out.