Quick Facts
| Detail | Info |
| Full name | Élephante Scottsdale |
| Address | 7014 E Camelback Rd, Suite 601, Scottsdale, AZ 85251 |
| Location | Scottsdale Fashion Square, Old Town Scottsdale |
| Cuisine | Coastal Italian / Mediterranean |
| Restaurant group | Wish You Were Here Group |
| Founder | Nick Mathers |
| Executive Chef Partner | Thomas Lim |
| Opened (Scottsdale) | December 4, 2024 |
| Also in | Santa Monica (original), New York, Las Vegas |
| Hidden gem inside | Bar Bambino — a tucked-away private cocktail lounge |
| Design inspiration | Pantelleria and the Aeolian Islands off the Sicilian coast |
| Signature materials | Locally sourced aqua marble, Indonesian rattan, custom teak |
| Known for | Whipped eggplant, wood-fired pizza, espresso martinis, deep house music |
| Best for | Date night, celebrations, group dining, late-night cocktails |
| Reservations | Strongly recommended via OpenTable |
Introduction: Why Élephante Is the Restaurant Everyone Is Talking About
There’s a particular type of restaurant that a city remembers. Not just because the food is good — though in this case it genuinely is — but because the whole evening feels different from the moment you walk through the door. The lighting hits differently. The music is better than you expected. The menu entices you to place more orders than you initially intended. And somewhere around the second round of drinks, you realise you haven’t checked your phone in an hour.
Élephante Scottsdale is that kind of restaurant.
Opened in December 2024 inside Scottsdale Fashion Square, it arrived in Arizona with a reputation already built. The original location in Santa Monica had become one of the most sought-after reservations on the California coast. When Nick Mathers and his Wish You Were Here Group announced they were bringing it east, Scottsdale’s dining community paid attention.
What arrived was something more interesting than a simple franchise. The Scottsdale Élephante is a full reimagining of the concept for its new desert setting — same coastal Italian soul, but with an indoor-outdoor layout that takes full advantage of the Arizona climate, a design language that blends Italian craftsmanship with local materials, and a hidden cocktail lounge called Bar Bambino that exists nowhere else in the Élephante family.
This is the complete guide to what Élephante Scottsdale is, what makes it worth a visit, and everything you need to know before you go.
See also “Bel Air Mansion: Inside the World’s Most Legendary Address“
The Story Behind It: Where Élephante Came From
To understand the Scottsdale location, it helps to know where Élephante began.
With a simple yet bold concept, Nick Mathers started the Wish You Were Here Group. He wanted to create restaurant experiences that felt less like a service transaction and more like an actual escape. Not escape in the theme-park sense — nothing artificial or performative — but genuine transportation to somewhere else. A different pace. A different sensibility. A room that makes you forget whatever was happening outside it.
The original Élephante in Santa Monica was built around that idea. Its inspiration was the southern Italian coast — specifically the volcanic island of Pantelleria and the Aeolian Islands off Sicily. These are places where cooking is product-driven and unfussy, where meals happen at long tables in open air, and where the line between eating and socialising is almost invisible. The name itself is playful — élephante is Italian for elephant — and carries the same warmth the restaurant tries to deliver.
Santa Monica worked. The restaurant built a loyal following among the kind of Los Angeles crowd that eats out professionally, so to speak — people who have been to everything and are hard to impress. Élephante impressed them. That success opened doors to expansion, and over time the Wish You Were Here Group grew to include locations in New York and Las Vegas alongside its Los Angeles base.
Scottsdale was the next chapter. And for a group that prides itself on designing each location specifically for its environment, Arizona presented a genuine opportunity to do something new.
The Space: Designed to Feel Like Somewhere Else
Walk into Élephante Scottsdale and the first thing you notice is that it doesn’t look like the inside of a shopping mall.
That is, entirely, the point.
Nick Mathers and his in-house design team built the Scottsdale location to feel like a discovery rather than a destination. The space is designed around contrast — cool marble surfaces against warm organic textures, sculptural indoor plants against the light pouring through a fold-away glass wall that opens the dining room directly onto the patio.
At the room’s centre sits the bar, which is the space’s anchor and its most striking single element. It’s topped with locally sourced aqua marble — the colour of shallow water in the Mediterranean — and set on a base that combines Indonesian rattan and custom teak woodwork. The combination is genuinely beautiful in a way that photographs understate. It’s the kind of craftsmanship you notice and then can’t stop noticing.
The walls carry a mountain mural in warm greens, burnt oranges, and earthy browns that manages to read simultaneously as Arizona desert and Italian hillside. It’s an ambiguous reference that works in both directions. Large banquettes run along the perimeter, sized for groups and built for long dinners where courses arrive and conversations meander.
The outdoor patio is shaded and designed for the Scottsdale climate — cool enough in the evenings for most of the year, with the fold-away glass wall meaning the inside and outside spaces flow into each other rather than existing as separate rooms.
And then there’s Bar Bambino.
Step through a curtained entrance inside Élephante and the whole atmosphere changes. Bar Bambino is Scottsdale-exclusive — it doesn’t exist at any other Élephante location — and it feels like a genuine secret. A curved bronze bar runs along one wall, topped by a bronze scalloped canopy. A center chandelier illuminates a retro-mirrored ceiling. A live DJ plays every night. The room fills up early and can only accommodate a modest number of people.
Bar Bambino offers tableside cocktail cart service — a nod to classic bar ritual, updated for a room that takes its cocktails seriously without taking itself too seriously.
The Food: Coastal Italian That Earns the Hype
Mediterranean restaurants are everywhere in Scottsdale. The ones that endure are the ones where the kitchen has something genuinely distinctive to say. Élephante’s kitchen, led by Chef Partner Thomas Lim, has several things to say — and it says most of them with vegetables and pasta.
The philosophy is produce-driven and Italian coastal: ingredients matter more than complexity, and the best dish is usually the one that respects its main component rather than burying it.
Whipped eggplant has become the restaurant’s signature starter, and it’s easy to understand why. The texture is something between hummus and a mousse, dripping with good olive oil, served alongside puccia bread — an oversized, pillow-soft Italian bread that puffs dramatically and arrives at the table looking almost too large to eat. It is not. It disappears quickly.
The wood-fired pizzas are the other non-negotiable. Blistered crust, properly charred in a way that’s hard to achieve without a real wood fire. The hot honey variation in particular has developed a following among regulars. The heat is subtle, the sweetness rounds it out, and the combination with the char of the crust is one of those flavour combinations that seems obvious once you’ve had it.
Pasta is made in-house, and the cacio e pepe has been specifically called out in food coverage of the restaurant. Simple Italian cooking done at a high level. The cacio e pepe test — just cheese and pepper, nowhere to hide — is one of the better ways to evaluate whether a kitchen genuinely understands pasta, and Élephante passes it.
For larger plates, the diver scallops with citrus butter and the whole lobster piccata with caper brown butter, shallot, garlic, and lemon represent the kitchen at its most ambitious. These are dishes built on classical Italian technique and very good sourcing. Specifically, the piccata is the type of dish that makes the cost of supper seem reasonable rather than ostentatious.
The octopus salad earns consistent mentions in guest reviews, typically with some surprise at the portion size.
In terms of cocktails, the restaurant’s signature beverage is now the espresso martini. It’s a strong one — made with mezcal as a variation on the classic vodka base, which adds a smoky depth that works remarkably well with the bitterness of the espresso.
The Experience: What to Actually Expect
Élephante Scottsdale is not a quiet dinner restaurant. That’s worth saying clearly, because knowing what a place is allows you to enjoy it rather than be surprised by it.
The dining room is lively. Music is a considered part of the atmosphere — deep house, generally, at a volume that adds energy without making conversation impossible. The crowd skews toward date nights, birthday celebrations, and groups of friends who’ve decided to make a proper evening of it rather than just grabbing dinner.
Noise is the most consistent critique in guest feedback. The room is really noisy on Friday or Saturday nights. If you’re looking for a quiet, intimate dinner where you can hear every word of a whispered conversation, Élephante during peak hours is not that. The outdoor patio is meaningfully quieter, and weekday lunches or early weekday dinners offer a calmer version of the experience without sacrificing the quality of the food.
Reservations are essential, particularly for Thursday through Saturday evenings. The restaurant consistently fills up, and walk-in availability is limited during peak times. Even with a reservation, the restaurant can run slightly behind on the busiest nights — something guest feedback has noted and which is worth factoring into your evening plans if you have a show or another commitment afterward.
Pricing sits in the upscale-but-not-absurd range for Scottsdale’s Fashion Square dining district. The selection of pasta dishes and main courses is typical of a reputable Italian restaurant on the seaside. Cocktails are priced to match the quality and the location. Sharing plates is both encouraged and economically sensible — the menu is designed for it.
Group dining is fully accommodated. For parties of 8 to 12, the restaurant offers a family-style prix fixe option. For events of 13 or more, a dedicated events contact handles bookings separately. Private and semi-private event spaces exist within the restaurant.
Thursday nights have become a signature event — the Thursday Night Out program pairs dinner at Élephante with access to Bar Bambino, creating a built-in two-part evening that’s become popular with regulars.
Where It Fits in Scottsdale’s Dining Scene
Scottsdale Fashion Square already had serious restaurant credentials before Élephante arrived. Nobu, Toca Madera, Francine, and Ocean 44 had established the mall as a destination for upscale dining, not just retail. Élephante joined a competitive lineup and carved out its own position within it.
What separates Élephante from the other high-end options in that specific corridor is the energy of the room. Many of its neighbors are excellent restaurants. Élephante is an excellent restaurant that is also genuinely fun — in the sense of lively, social, and worth lingering in beyond the meal itself. The transition from dinner table to Bar Bambino provides something that most competitors in the space don’t: a natural reason to extend the evening without leaving and starting over somewhere else.
The Old Town Scottsdale location also means the restaurant sits within walking distance of the neighbourhood’s broader nightlife scene, which makes it easy to slot Élephante into a larger evening rather than treating it as a standalone destination.
For visitors to Scottsdale, it offers something specific: a restaurant that feels like a genuine discovery rather than a tourist option, where the quality of the food is real and the experience of the room is something you’ll reference later when describing the trip.
The Wish You Were Here Group: The Business Behind the Restaurant
Understanding Élephante Scottsdale means understanding the company that built it.
The Wish You Were Here Group is Nick Mathers’ hospitality brand, built around the idea of travel-inspired restaurant experiences. Every idea in the portfolio is based on a particular location or emotion—the kind of sensory recall that is associated with a meal and a place. The group runs locations in Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas, and now Scottsdale, and each location is treated as a design project in its own right rather than a cookie-cutter expansion.
Mathers has been quoted describing the goal at Scottsdale specifically as creating an escape. That language appears in multiple coverage pieces and press materials, and it’s not marketing language empty of substance — the design choices in the room reflect a genuine commitment to that idea. The aqua marble, the rattan, the indoor plants, the mountain mural, the way the glass wall opens the inside to the desert evening — all of it points toward somewhere else while remaining specific to Arizona.
Chef Partner Thomas Lim brings the kitchen’s voice to each location. His approach is consistent with the Mediterranean coastal philosophy of the brand — produce quality is the foundation, technique serves the ingredient rather than showing off, and the menu Instead than staying set as a greatest hits rotation, it changes with seasonal availability.
Final Words
Élephante Scottsdale arrived in December 2024 with real expectations to meet. The original Santa Monica location had built genuine credibility over years of consistent performance, and Scottsdale diners have access to a mature, competitive restaurant market. Meeting those expectations required something more than replication.
What Mathers and his team delivered was a restaurant that earns its place in its new city on its own terms. The design is specific — not generic Italian, not generic Mediterranean, but a considered and particular point of view executed with quality materials and genuine care. The cuisine is based on honesty regarding ingredients and technique. Bar Bambino adds something that the broader Scottsdale nightlife scene didn’t quite have: a high-quality, intimate late-night cocktail experience that doesn’t ask you to sacrifice the quality of your evening to stay out later.
Élephante Scottsdale is not for everyone. It’s loud on busy nights. It’s priced for occasion rather than routine. And if your preference is white-tablecloth quiet, the energy of the room will feel like friction rather than fun.
However, for the diner who desires an entire evening—not just a meal—enclosed in a space that appears to have been thoughtfully designed about where you’d be sitting and what you’d be drinking while you were there, Élephante Scottsdale is a strong answer to the question of where to go in Old Town.
See also “Bel Air Mansion: Inside the World’s Most Legendary Address“
FAQs
1. Where exactly is Élephante Scottsdale located?
It’s at 7014 East Camelback Road, Suite 601, inside Scottsdale Fashion Square — Arizona’s largest mall, located at the intersection of Camelback and Scottsdale Road in the Fashion Square district of Old Town Scottsdale.
2. What kind of food does Élephante Scottsdale serve?
Mediterranean and coastal Italian food with a focus on simplicity and high-quality products. The menu includes wood-fired pizzas, house-made pastas, fresh seafood dishes, and shareable starters. The culinary inspiration comes from the southern Italian coast — specifically the islands of Pantelleria and the Aeolian archipelago.
3. What are the must-order dishes?
The whipped eggplant with puccia bread is the restaurant’s most talked-about starter. The hot honey wood-fired pizza and the cacio e pepe pasta are both consistently praised. For larger plates, the diver scallops and the whole lobster piccata represent the kitchen at its most ambitious. The espresso martini — with mezcal — is the cocktail most associated with the restaurant.
4. Do I need a reservation?
Yes. Strongly. Especially Thursday through Saturday evenings, the restaurant fills up and walk-in availability is very limited. Reservations are available through OpenTable. Even with a booking, the restaurant can run slightly behind on peak nights.
5. What is Bar Bambino and how do I get in?
Bar Bambino is a hidden cocktail lounge tucked inside Élephante Scottsdale, exclusive to this location. You enter through a curtained doorway inside the restaurant. It features a curved bronze bar, live DJ nightly, a retro-mirrored ceiling, and tableside cocktail cart service. Reservations for Bar Bambino are separate from the main restaurant and can be booked via OpenTable or by texting the venue directly. It’s worth securing a spot in advance.
6. How loud is it?
Loud — particularly on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. The music is intentional and at a volume that adds energy to the room. Deep house is the typical playlist. The outdoor patio is meaningfully quieter. Weekday lunches and early dinners offer the full food quality in a calmer setting.
7. What is the price range?
It sits comfortably in the upscale range for Scottsdale’s Fashion Square dining district. Both the menu design and the economics encourage sharing many courses; purchasing multiple small and medium plates usually yields greater variety and value than ordering one large entrée each.
8. Who is Nick Mathers and what is the Wish You Were Here Group?
Nick Mathers is the founder and designer behind the Wish You Were Here Group, the hospitality company that operates Élephante alongside other travel-inspired restaurant concepts. The group has locations in Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas, and Scottsdale. Each location is treated as a distinct design and culinary project rather than a franchised copy.
9. Can I host a private event there?
Yes. Élephante Scottsdale has private and semi-private event spaces. For groups of 8 to 12, a family-style prix fixe menu is available and can be booked via email at info@elephanteaz.com. For parties of 13 and above, a dedicated events team handles bookings at events@elephanteaz.com.
10. Are there options for dietary restrictions?
Yes. Gluten-free and vegan options are available, and the staff is noted in guest feedback as being genuinely knowledgeable and helpful with dietary needs. If you have specific requirements, contacting the restaurant ahead of your visit is advisable.
11. What is the Thursday Night Out experience?
It’s a programmed two-part evening: dinner at Élephante followed by access to Bar Bambino. The Thursday Night Out package is designed to flow naturally from the dining experience to the cocktail lounge, creating a complete evening without needing to leave the venue. Table booking at Bar Bambino for Thursday nights is separate and worth doing in advance.
12. How does the Scottsdale location compare to the original Santa Monica Élephante?
The Scottsdale location is more than a copy of Santa Monica. It’s a distinct design built around the Arizona environment — indoor-outdoor space incorporating desert plants and cacti, locally sourced aqua marble, and a mountain mural specific to the Southwestern landscape. Bar Bambino is a Scottsdale-exclusive addition. The culinary concept and coastal Italian food philosophy remain consistent across both, but the physical experience of the two restaurants is genuinely different.
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