With Mrs. TJ occupied with hanging out with her mother, I met dinwiddie at Zaytinya yesterday to drink some wine, eat some grub and watch some hockey.

Zaytinya is a Greek/Turkish/Lebanese mezzes (aka tappas) place just a couple of blocks from the MCI Center in downtown Washington DC. It's a well-appointed reasonably new (2 years?) place that gets jammed quick. Pretty noisy, but you can remarkably carry on a normal conversation where you don't have to raise your voice and you can easily hear the person you are conversing with.

Dinwiddie and I never settled on whether we'd bring wine or wing it off of their oddball wine list (pretty much only Greek, Turkish and Lebanese wines). I thought we'd bring wine, and DW thought we'd wing it. He ended up scoring a bottle quick right around the corner and we were set.

We ordered 8 plates and popped the Turley (2001?) Juveniles Zin and the Spanish wine that dw got (a gran riserva from 1990, something about Duron?). The plates included some frites-like things with a yogurt sauce, some baby octopus (well seasoned and almost black), smoked/baked oysters, this interesting lamb kebab thing -- sort of sausage like with onions and yogurt, these carrot, apricot and pine nut fritters (just ok), this tiny beef filled pasta with yet more yogurt and cheese I think and lamb shanks with superb flavors and spices (best dish IMO). I think I must be missed one or two, but perhaps DW will chime in. We also both eyeballed the same dessert, a sort of chocolate cake thingie with cardamom something or other and cream and it was deliciously sweet and savory at the same time. Nicely done.

The Turley was excellent, but did not WOW me. I'd give it maybe an 89/90. Nice jammy and brambly flavors with loads of fruit and great acidity. The Duron was, as expected, something completely different. It had sort of a cognac-eyness to it at times, showed some evidence of bricking, and developed a delicious smokiness to it. Pretty nice. Have no idea how to rate something like it, but, I'll give it a stab with 86 TJ points.

The Caps at the game later, looked really terrible, especially during the second period, and it was odd to see them go on the power play without Peter Bondra on point. Still, they battled back from a 2 goal deficit to tie it up and the OT session made no winners.

Nice evening.

The only dish you forgot was the grilled sardines. Excellent. I loved the lamb shank, and the pasta filled with beef was really interesting and very tasty. I also liked the baby octopus.