Honest, I would have liked Zaytinya even if my waiter, Isa, hadn't told me I had beautiful eyes. Isa also has beautiful eyes, by the way. All right, down to business. Zaytinya, which opened October 2002, is Washington's hottest new restaurant, and if you don't believe me, take it from Conde Nast Traveler magazine, whose May 2003 issue named Zaytinya as one of the top 75 new restaurants in the world. Executive chef Jose Andres is behind it all. Zaytinya is a big restaurant and it stays busy all the time. The place takes reservations only at lunch and for pretheater dinners, 5-6:30pm, which is why the restaurant hands out beeper-discs if there's a long wait for a table. Zaytinya was hopping on the Sunday night we were there, but fortunately we didn't have a wait. Once seated, we received a basket of hot and billowy thin shells of pita bread, along with a saucer of olive oil swirled with pomegranate syrup. Isa guided us through the menu, explaining that the wine list was almost entirely Greek, that Zaytinya is Turkish for "olive oil," and pointing out which mezze dishes he would recommend. Although the dinner menu lists several entrees, what you want to do here is order lots of little dishes. We savored the zucchini-cheese cakes, which came 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 kefalofraviera cheese. Many of these flavors were new to my palette, but I found everything to be wonderfully delicious. For dessert, we ordered a Turkish coffee chocolate cake, and the more exotic Medjool dates roasted in Vinsanto (a kind of dessert wine), rolled in crushed orange shortbread, with olive oil ice cream. The dates were our favorite. Isa was quite proud of us.