Zaytinya

Frommer's Review

How popular is Zaytinya? Well, the restaurant serves, on average, 750 people per night during the week and 1,000 per night on weekends. It's big and it's busy and it always has been. Executive Chef José Andrés is behind it all (he continues as the executive chef/partner at Jaleo, and, at Café Atlantico, he is the creative director).

The place takes reservations only at lunch and for pretheater dinners, 5 to 6:30pm, so if you have to wait for a table, join the rollicking bar scene, where 20- and 30-somethings can be counted on to provide nightly entertainment. Once seated, you receive a basket of hot and billowy-thin shells of pita bread, along with a saucer of olive oil swirled with pomegranate syrup. Your waiter will guide you through the menu; explain that the wine list, like the meze dishes, are a mixture of Greek, Turkish, and Lebanese specialties; and inform you that the word "Zaytinya" is Turkish for "olive oil." Although the dinner menu lists several entrees, what you want to do here is order lots of little dishes: zucchini-cheese cakes, which come with a caper and yogurt sauce; the carrot-apricot-pine nut fritters, served with pistachio sauce; sardines; a marinated salmon; fattoush, or salad of tomatoes and cucumbers mixed with pomegranate reduction, sumac, and olive oil, with crispy pita-bread croutons; and shrimp with tomatoes, onions, ouzo, and kefalograviera cheese. For dessert, try a Turkish coffee chocolate cake, or the seductive apples in saffron cream.

Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before planning your trip.

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