Osteria Elio Volpe: Anniversary dinner
We celebrated our 7 year anniversary this summer at Osteria Elio Volpe, an Italian restaurant in Kitsilano 🥰. They are also the sister restaurant of Osteria Savio Volpe on Kingsway, another Italian restaurant where we celebrated Valentine’s Day before.
I will preface with the fact that we had an Instagram collab for the Vancouver ice cream festival on the same day so we ate 6 ice-creams prior to eating dinner at Elio Volpe 🤪. This means we were feeling pretty full already and definitely did not need to order dessert.
But aside from that, here is our experience and everything we ordered!
Osteria Elio Volpe
540 W 17th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1T4
The vibe
I really liked the vibe at Elio Volpe. They had a sunny and peaceful outdoor patio ☀️ and a indoor-outdoor living type of infrastructure so that the inside also feels open and airy.
The space itself is quite big and it had a good buzz and energy amongst the crowd. They had an authentic pizza oven and really cool stone and concrete finishing on the walls.
Seating was comfortable but similar to Savio Volpe, I find the tables just too close together and you will have to squeeze a bit to get in and out between different tables (not the most accessible).
Food review
We ordered everything to share between 2 adults. Prices are in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
Arancini ($24)
My husband loves arancini (think of it like an Italian rice ball) so we ordered this as our appetizer.
I was pleasantly surprised to see it came with 6 servings because usually they only give you 2-3. The $24 price tag definitely seemed more worth it.
The inside filling was filled with green garlic, caciocavallo and a roasted onion aioli. These arancini were fried well and had a nice cheesy filling. They do change up the arancini seasonally.
Rigatoni cacio e pepe ($22)
For pastas 🍝, we chose the rigatoni cacio e pepe. It uses 10 year aged cheddar, roasted jalapeno and scallions. It had a very deep and cheesy flavour and the pasta was cooked perfectly al dente.
I like how for all the pastas, you can order a half or full size. This means you can try a little bit of multiple pastas if you wanted to. Pictured above is the half size for $22. Full size portion would be $39.
Manila clam pizza ($28)
Something that Elio Volpe has but Savio Volpe doesn’t is pizza on the menu 🍕! All of the pizza are pretty reasonably priced with the most expensive pizza being $39 but it has a black truffle topping.
From the list, we chose a pizza that we felt was unique – the Manila clam pizza. It also had Italian sausage, salsa bianca and parsley.
When I saw that there was a pizza oven in the kitchen, I already knew the pizzas here would be good. This pizza tasted amazing 👍! I loved the crust and the thinness of the pizza dough. There was a good amount of clam meat on the pizza and it surprisingly paired ok with Italian sausage (I thought the sausage would overpower and make the whole thing too salty).
Half branzino ($48)
For our last and main dish, we ordered the branzino! I’ve always wanted to try a branzino but it is usually very expensive and this was also the case at Elio Volpe.
On the menu, a whole branzino was listed as “MP” – that’s how you know it will be expensive (when they don’t even list the price 😉). Our server told us the branzino today would cost around $90+ but there is an option to order half a branzino for $48.
Ordering half was a better fit for us because we were already full from all the ice-cream and we had a whole pizza at our table already.
The half branzino was served with marcona almond, fennel pollen, caponata and meyer lemon. It wasn’t that difficult to eat because they already prepped the fish and served it in the easiest way to eat, but I wouldn’t say I loved the taste of the branzino. It tasted sophisticated and balanced, but maybe just out of my palette. I wouldn’t order a branzino again or pay anything over $40 for it.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
We had a romantic and delicious dinner at Elio Volpe celebrating our 7th anniversary and 1st wedding anniversary.
Out of everything we ordered, I liked the Manila clam pizza the most so I highly recommend you to choose this or any of their other pizzas! I also liked the arancini (good value) and the rigatoni, but I would like to try another pasta next time because they all sounded good. The only thing I wouldn’t recommend is the branzino and I think that’s mostly because I learned now that I don’t like branzino.
Compared to Savio Volpe, I find Elio Volpe to be more casual and that is mostly because their average menu item is cheaper. I hear they are also supposed to be more seafood based, but I don’t think it’s too far off from Savio Volpe’s selection. Both restaurants have a chef’s tasting menu priced at $80+ per person.
Elio Volpe is a good restaurant to check out for any special occasion or just a dinner with the girls or family – there is definitely something for everyone on the menu.
Sincerely, Loewe
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