this week, starting saturday the 3rd, was supposed to be a big restaurant week for cavin and i. on deck was dinner at dino with cavin's brother, the brooklyn brewery dinner at eatbar, kotobuki with dpl, and finally culminating with the gerard pangaud dinner at l'academie de cuisine on the 10th.

but for reasons beyond our control, the second night of the gerard dinner was cancelled. and since we were unable to switch to the first night, we had to unfortunately decline (very sad day in our lives).

so friday being all depressed about not being able to go to the gerard dinner, cavin and i decided to eat out. we actually didn't decide we were going out until we met up at gallery place metro stop friday after a long day at work.

where do you wanna go? how about matchbox? ok. sure.

wow. what are all these old people doing at matchbox? and it's super jammed! aie. i don't see any bar seats, and i don't feel like dealing with it. ok. so what do you wanna do now? i dunno, but i like truffled frites.

but as we're walking in the cold weather to poste: well what are we going to do about dinner? are we eating at poste? oh. i dunno. would you rather go to cafe atlantico? well, it would be cheaper than poste. it would? wait. where are we? 9th street? let's go to zaytinya. it's right over there. ok.

so after going through all of our possible choices, we ended up at another of jose andres' empire of restaurants (including cafe atlantico, minibar, jaleo, oyamel).

when we arrived, we tried to jockey for seats at the bar. unfortunately, everyone and their mother was there early saving seats for their so's. ugh. so we ended up getting a table, which actually was better in the long run.

zaytinya is an upscale eastern mediterranean (greek, turkish, lebanese) restaurant that has mezzes, or small plates. it's of the tapas fashion, so you order a bunch of mezzes and share with the table. normally for cavin and i, we tend to order 4-6 mezzes (though, we ordered 6 this time around and we were stuffed).

we started with cocktails: i ordered the apricot sour and cavin the retsina cocktail. my drink tasted like apricot juice with sour mix (and vodka, though, i could barely taste the alcohol). apparently, retsina is some sort of wine. to be quite honest, cavin's drink would have tasted ok had it not been so watered down. i'm not even sure if it had any vodka in it, as the menu says it does. well, you win some, you lose some, eh?

we decided on 6 mezzes, because i had only eaten 1/2 peanut butter sandwich all day and i was hungry. we ended up with two veggie mezzes, two meat, and two seafood:

-cabbage dolmades (stuffed with rice & mushrooms, served with avgolemono sauce)
-kolokithakia (baby squash served with ladolemono and micro greens)
-mavrofassoula me loucaniko (grilled pork and orange rind sausage with bean stew)
-kafta harra (ground lamb and beef served in a stewed tomato sauce with pine nuts)
-fried squid (served with fresh dill & garlic-yogurt sauce)
-seared salmon (marinated in herbs & served with roasted garlic yogurt)

the cabbage dolmades was tasty - the inside tasted like it might have had some sort of cheese in it, and it was topped with the avgolemono sauce, that was very reminiscent of hollandaise sauce.

i think the best dish was the kafta harra (one of the specials). the meat was cooked perfectly and was not dried out, and the tomato sauce that was served on top was not too acidic for the rest of the dish.

the one dish that didn't wow us was the mavrofassoula. i didn't taste any orange rind in the sausage, and the bean stew consisted of the beans and the bean liquid one would find in a can of beans.

this was our third trip to zaytinya, and i think our bill each time was about what it was friday night: $60 (before tip). not too bad, for being able to taste 6 different dishes. i think next time though, 4 or 5 mezzes would be enough, and i might stick to drinking wine or maybe even try ouzo.

oh, and i just found this out on the zaytinya website: zaytinya is olive oil in turkish.

zaytinya
701 9th street nw
washington, dc 20004
202.638.0800
202.638.6969

Labels: restaurant, seafood, wine