Elisa Steakhouse: Seafood Plateau

Earlier in the year, I started to notice a bunch of posts for a new steakhouse in Yaletown called Elisa. Brought to you by Toptable Group (the same company responsible for Blue Water, Araxi, and West), I made sure to bookmark it for a future visit.

Since it’s run by the same company as Blue Water Cafe (one of our favs) and it’s located just a block away, we shouldn’t have been surprised that Elisa reminded us so much of Blue… right down to the blue napkins.

We started out our meal with a couple of non-alcoholic beverages… the Yuzu Charlatan ($8) with earl grey, lavender, and sparkling water, and the Shirley Yobs ($9). They also brought us out these complimentary amuse bouche (honestly can’t remember what they were).

The complimentary bread and butter also helped to tide us over until our food arrived. The bread was quite crusty but it was a bit too dense/chewy for my liking.

We decided to order the Seafood Plateau ($59) comprised of kusshi + irish point oysters, shrimp cocktail, tuna tartare, cured hamachi, and cured golden eagle coho salmon.

The shrimp were quite large and plump and I was quite pleased at how the cured hamachi, salmon, and tuna turned out.

For our mains, we went with the Wagyu Hanging Tender ($34 6oz) from Brant Lake and the Jacob’s Ladder ($38) with red wine braised certified angus reserve short rib. We completed our mains with a side of Brussels Sprouts ($10) fried with brown butter and topped with parmesan.

The Brussels Sprouts were good but quite oily while the short rib was super tender and meaty.

The Wagyu hanging tender (note that this shouldn’t be confused with Kobe beef) was quite tender but I was a bit distracted by the steak knives that they use here. They’re quite slender and remind me of throwing knives. Unfortunately, they don’t make for good steak knives as I had a lot of trouble cutting through the steak (which is odd given how tender it was). Perhaps the one I had wasn’t sharpened properly but I did see another patron having the same difficulty with his knife as well.

After our meal, they brought us out some complimentary petit fours but we still wound up also ordering the Sorbet Trio ($12) which consisted of banana-passion fruit, cassis, and rhubarb sorbet. Out of the three, I was surprised that I really enjoyed the rhubarb the most… it had a very light flavour and not as tart as the other two.

Overall, a pretty good meal here and there were definitely some high points.

1109 Hamilton St
Vancouver, BC

elisasteak.com

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