Elba Cottesloe

I came here with a girlfriend for a drink and an early dinner on a Saturday. I liked the open seating in front, unfortunately it was packed even though it was only around 6pm. I think they’ve just updated their menu and unfortunately many things I wanted they didn’t have — arancini balls, caprese salad, and the bolognesi pasta.
Luckily there were plenty of other good alternatives — we ended up ordering the smoked trout croquettes, grilled prawns and the gnocchi. The croquettes were so soft and flavourful but I really didn’t taste any trout at all. The shaved manchego cheese and aioli were nice toppings.
The gnocchi was delicious — soft pillowy gnocchi in a rich four cheese sauce and topped with some toasted walnuts that added great crunch and texture to the dish. The garlic prawns were tasty as well.
Two glasses of wine, two small plates and one pasta for about $ 80 was decently priced but considering the size of the dishes, I was definitely still a bit hungry afterward.

I visited Elba on Saturday evening for an early dinner with friends! At 6.00pm on this particular Saturday it was very quiet, which does not really explain the time it took for us to get served drinks initially. Service was a little slow to start with but admittedly we ended up being served by a very helpful young lad who was more then happy to go through the menu with us and help with or food selection.
Elba has both indoor and outdoor seating options, Napoleon Street is fairly quiet at night so the outdoor options are nice and chilled and good for the summer weather — they also have heaters out there in case you get cold.
Don’t be fooled Elba is primarily a wine bar, you are spoilt for choice with wine, the menu contains no beer. In fact when I posed the question what beer do they have the only beer on offer was Peroni and Peroni Leggera on tap (which is great considering I like them both), however the kegs were out and Becks was the only other selection of beer on offer this is sold in a bottle! If you are looking for wine or bubbles — the choice is yours for the non-​wine drinkers amongst us the choice is limited.
The food: Elba has a tapas style menu and there is quite a bit to chose from. There was three of us on Saturday night and after a member of staff went through portions of the food with us (most plates seem to have 4 portions on them) we elected to start with three dishes and if we needed more place a further order. We ordered the Open Pork Pizzeta with Slaw, Corn Fritters and Pulled Pork Tacos. I must say the food was really good, given the slow start to the evening I was a little suspicious of what the food would be like. I was definitely surprised. The tapas plates contained tasty morsels — the winners for me were the two pork dishes, I loved the Pork Tacos and could easily have eaten all 4 of them they had crispy shells and a spicy salsa topping, the Open Pork Pizzeta was also delicious served with onion jam and slaw!
I am pretty sure Elba isn’t always as quiet as it was on Saturday evening, and I have a feeling it starts to get busy a little later on.
I also loved the music they were playing cool mixes of old and new which we were told were mixed by their resident DJ!