Elska Italian Restaurant

(Sapporo, Japan)

Shit man! I was impressed with Elska. This little Italian (with a Japanese twist) restaurant is so unassuming and then when the food comes out, BAM! Just blown away by how simple and good the dishes are. The menu is small, which is a good sign in my book because it means that they can pay extra attention to the few dishes and as they are constantly producing them through the night, they just get better and better. It’s kind of like when you tell a story, and you end up telling the same story over and over again when you see different people, but every time you tell it, you make it just a little bit better than the time before.

We stumbled across this restaurant after going to the very disappointing Thai restaurant next door. The Thai restaurant was dead when we ate there, even though it was peak dinner time on a Saturday night. After we finished up at the Thai restaurant we fancied some wine and looking through the window of Elska, the atmosphere just grabbed us. It was full, but luckily as we walked in a couple were just leaving. The wine here is also very good. The first time we came here was when we just had some wine and nibbles because we were already stuffed with crap Thai food. Just judging by the nibbles and the wine, we knew that the rest of the food was going to be just as good. We were not wrong.

My lady friend was also very impressed with the food, and she is a picky eater. This is one of the few restaurants where everything she ate was met with a noise a satisfaction, ‘mmmmmm’. The pork steak was awesome, very soft and succulent. The tomato pasta! Wow. Just a simple tomato sauce with olives and garlic, but one of the best pasta dishes I have had in a long time. For desert, we shared a banana cake. Damn, this was such a good finisher to a perfect meal.

A meal for two people will set you back about 7,000 yen including a couple of glasses of delicious wine each. I would recommend Elska for couples. The restaurant is quite small and the ambient atmosphere does not bode well with rowdy groups. The only down side is that they don’t accept credit cards. I mean, come on man. We are in the 21st century! How can there still be restaurants that don’t accept credit cards? Actually, there’s quite a few in Sapporo that don’t. One day…….

Telephone number: 011-312-0393.
Address: South 3, West 6, Chuoku, Sapporo.

Click here for a map to Elska.