Food and wine on the Island of Elba: ltypical dishes and traditional flavours

The flavours of the Elba cuisine come from simple dishes where fantasy mingles with knowledge when choosing the ingredients. This very cuisine, considered humble in the past, thanks to tourism is today considered refined.

The most popular dishes are those that require long and complicated preparation, and one of the hot favourites is without a doubt the Rio style stockfish, an exquisite dish made with salted anchovies, onions, tomatoes, basil, parsely, green peppers, black olives, pine nuts, capers and of course oil, chilli peppers and salt.

Gurguglione is another speciality from Rio made from vegetables, cuttlefish ink risotto, stuffed tattlers, the famous cacciucco or fish soup, but also very simple dishes like boiled octopus, fried picarels or stuffed sardines.

After all these delicious dishes you could only finish off with a good wine, even though, sad to say, Elba used to have about 3.000 hectares of vineyards but over the past fifty years they have gone down to less than 200.

However the Elba wines are first class and many bear the DOC label, such as the excellent: Elba White, Elba Red, Rosato, Ansonica, Moscato and Aleatico (DOCG).