We sat at the terrace on a beautiful summer evening for a family dinner. We liked everything about this restaurant. We had an exceptional dining experience at a beautiful place, with beautiful services and beautiful dishes!

We had a group of six adult family members. The dishes are meant to be shared so we ordered about 14 dishes for all of us and it was a lot of food! I tasted a bit of almost everything that we ordered and each dish was delicious! They give you as much pita bread as you want. The food was served pretty quickly after the waiter took our orders and we were finished eating after one hour. The bill came to about $144.00 plus tip, which is about $30.00 per person. We had leftovers and took them home. We probably ordered too much food but we wanted to try several dishes. Everybody in our party agreed that this was a very nice restaurant.

We met friends at the restaurant, who recommended it. The waiter attentively explained the Mediterranean - MiddleEastern style menu emphasizing that the portions are rather small. I went for the imam bayildi, babaganoush and the calamari combination. The dishes were accompanied by an interesting pita style bread, and I liked all of them. My husband ordered a chachik like soup that he returned finding it extremely salty(I agreed) got as an exchange another chicken soup which was also over salted. He ordered lamb chops and humus, but was not impressed with either. Our friends ordered other dishes, but I haven’t tasted those. Neither me nor my husband could finish our portions, so home they went. The noise level was beyond belief, so we made a hasty retreat. The opinions are mixed. I would return, my husband would not. Ying and yang!

I’d like to start with saying that Zaytinya was our favorite place in DC for many years. Last couple of visits were total disappointment. It’s really hard to get an attention of the server, we had to bring an extra chair for our table and were waiting for two extra set of plates for ever. The food was on the table before the drinks. The highlight of the dinner was a hair in the watermelon salad. Somebody from the kitchen showed up with a new salad and reassured us that the kitchen staff wears head protection and he had no idea how the hair got into our plate. Sometime later, a new hair was discovered in the dish with scallops. The manager took the plate and the server brought a new dish without even asking us if we needed it. I must say, that this is the first time when we had a situation like this in the restaurant. Also,no apologies to speak of and no comps were made in the bill, it was left as it is. Few weeks earlier we had a dinner when we were served fish course from the tasting and meat course at the same time, considering that the table was weary small, it was very inconvenient. The falafel was super dry and didn’t taste like good falafel at all, once again even though, we returned it, it was reflected in the bill.
On the bright note, the food is typically good and if you’ll have Hector as your server - you are in the good hands, he’s the best!

We love Zaytinya. Beautiful space, open and airy. The hummus and sides are really yummy and addictive but don’t fill up on the bread! The falafel is very good and we always eat family style so we can taste a little of a lot of the dishes. Valet is available.