The best restaurants in Reykjavik, Iceland
Øivind Haug
The Nordic folk-food movement has made giant steps in Sweden and Denmark. Now, Iceland is ready for its moment in the midnight sun
By Harry Pearson
Graphic designer Omar Hauksson and daughterØivind Haug
Back at the start of the new millennium, Iceland was booming. Its bankers bought English football teams. Glossy SUVs clogged the narrow streets of Reykjavik's old town. The hedonistic lifestyle portrayed in Hallgrímur Helgason's novel 101 Reykjavik became more prevalent as bars and clubs in the capital stayed open 24 hours a day, turning the volcanic island into a North Atlantic Ibiza.
Then, in 2008, the bottom fell out as its financial institutions went bust, its currency crumbled, and inflation, interest rates and unemployment rocketed. According to grim predictions in British news reports, Iceland was on the verge of imploding, its 300,000 citizens robbed of public services, stripped of pensions and forced to work 18 hours a day, seven days a week, for the next five generations, just to dig their nation out of the hole. All of which makes its steady recovery since 2011, and the cheeriness of the locals, a little surprising.
'Maybe the whole crash wasn't a bad thing,' says the man sitting next to me at the bar in Boston, a fashionable lounge - kitsch gold chinoiserie wallpaper, mirrored columns, stuffed crow behind the bar - in Laugavegur, Reykjavik's main street. 'Before it happened, I was just making money. I never thought about anything else. Then suddenly everything went bad and I found out something super: that my wife of 15 years is actually a really cool person. She makes great jokes.' He raises his beer glass in a salute.
Bread with rhubarb jam at Bergsson Mathús caféØivind Haug
In the wake of the collapse, Icelanders reverted to a simpler way of life, to home and hearth. Unable to import all but the essentials, they have rediscovered their roots. Out went the Milan-clad metrosexual, in came the Scandi hand-knit hipster. Bearded chap, rosy-cheeked woman. She has plaits, he has a bun. They have a baby; all have chunky jumpers.
The look is exemplified by local fashion brand Farmers Market, whose catalogue features male models so craggy and hairy they make the average Woolrich photo shoot look like a One Direction concert. The lopi sweater, made from the wool of Icelandic sheep, has become trendy again.
The new mood has also affected the culinary scene, which has become less formal, more folksy. The emphasis is on fresh fish and local lamb, pastured all year on a diet of moss, thrift and sedge, resulting in a delicate, gamey flavour that's closer to wild species such as chamois and mouflon than to most domesticated breeds.
Just over a year old, Nora Magasin is Reykjavik's answer to the gastropub. Its look is Icelandic junk-shop chic, a Norse offshoot of the interior styling popular in the SoFo area of Stockholm, all 1950s bouclé sofas and Woolworths-style art. There are old-school chairs, embroidered cushions, a Bakelite radio and a waitress in a 1940s tea-dress, and the water glasses are jam jars like those used by the Ralph Lauren-clad hillbillies in hit US TV series Justified. Melamine plates are stacked on a shelf above the Naugahyde banquettes.The beer is from local craft breweries such as Einstök and the food is good and plentiful. Local Norway lobster (a variety of langoustine) is battered, deep-fried and dusted with sumac; freshly caught tusk (a bit like cod) is oven-baked and served on a bed of paprika potatoes. The pudding, chocolate lava cake, is big, rich and gooey enough to send anyone to bed wondering if they really ought to have eaten it all.
Nora Magasin has a sign on the door proclaiming the place whale-friendly. Minke whale, once part of a subsistence diet in Iceland, is still eaten on the island. 'When I was a girl in the 1970s, we had it once a week with brown sauce,' a local tells me, wrinkling her nose. 'We never saw things like chicken - too expensive. We had lamb on Sundays, leftovers Mondays, fish the rest of the time.'
Read a list of traditional Icelandic food and it's clear these were people prepared to squeeze nutrients out of just about anything, from birch tea, moss syrup and crowberry jam (made from an evergreen plant commonly seen in British rockeries) to seabird eggs, horsemeat sausage and the infamous hákarl (rotten Greenland shark, which makes Norway's notoriously stinky lutefisk seem moreish by comparison). Unlike in the other Nordic countries, nature is not bountiful in Iceland. The island is practically treeless, so there are no woods filled with berries and mushrooms, nor is there a plentiful supply of game. There are no red deer or elk, nor any of the bears that end up canned in Finland, and the licence to shoot reindeer is handled by a lottery system so random and complex as to put off all but the most committed carnivore. As far as poultry goes, there are ducks, three varieties of geese and the ptarmigan (a kind of rangy grouse that's popular at Christmas). It's hardly an abundance. But then, as Elizabeth David pointed out, thriftiness is the mother of gastronomy.
In the wake of the financial collapse, Icelanders reverted to a simpler way of life, to home and hearth. They rediscovered their roots
'What about puffins?' I ask the one-time whale-eater.
'I have not had them often,' she says. 'It was not really a thing in Reykjavik. But in other towns in Iceland, yes. The young puffins, you see, they are attracted by the lights, so they will just fly into the villages.' She shrugs. What can you do? In a place like Iceland, when food drops into your lap like that, you can't afford to shoo it away just because it looks cute and had a junior book club named after it.
At Fish Market, a smart restaurant of Asiatic inflection run by Hrefna Rósa Sætran - one of Iceland's best chefs - minke whale and smoked puffin breast are among the starters. Having eaten minke in Norway, though, my view on it is much the same as that of Crocodile Dundee on the subject of grubs and sugar ants: 'You can live on it, but it tastes like shit.'
I feel I ought to try smoked puffin, though. Unfortunately, having resolved to order it, I hear the voice of my mother during a family trip to the Farne Islands in 1972 saying, 'Oh, look, aren't they just such dear little things,' and change my mind. To prove I am no queasy gastro-liberal, I plump for ocean perch with foie gras on a home-made prawn cracker. Having seen greylag geese on the town pond earlier while searching for the Alvar Aalto-designed Nordic House, I ask the waitress if the foie gras is from Iceland. She curls her lip. 'No. It would not be legal to treat a goose like that here,' she says. I feel a sense of national disapproval. Maybe I should have gone for the whale.
GeysirØivind Haug
Impressively whimsical, Hallgrímskirkja church stands on a hill a mile from Fish Market. Like all those in the Nordic countries, the Icelanders have a taste for the quirky: there are hand-knitted snoods on some of the lamp-posts, pilchard tins filled with geraniums on the fences, Björk on the supermarket sound system, and in the city centre I stumble across the HQ of the Icelandic Esperanto Association. Hallgrímskirkja is from that tradition - part Lutheran church, part spaceship. From the rocket-like spire, you can look straight down streets of corrugated iron-clad houses in shades of blue, green, red and cream, to the great bay beyond. On the far side of this expanse of water, towering cliffs are capped with snow for most of the year. In the dimming light of a late September day, the fishing boats are coming in, lights winking. It reminds me of a friend's comment, describing Reykjavik as 'what Whitby would be like if it was the capital of England'.
It's a fitting description. Reykjavik is a northern fishing port with the accoutrements of a national capital but few trappings of grandeur. There's a refreshing modesty to the place, which was here long before Iceland's recent economic travails. In Austurvöllur Square, the heart of the city, the cathedral is not much bigger than a parish church, the national parliament building the size of a Victorian public library.
Close by is Bergsson Mathús, where hand-knit hipsters brunch on soft-boiled eggs and bacon. There's home-made rhubarb jam, wholegrain bread and copies of Monocle for those without a baby in tow. Bergsson's logo features a sheep and a beetroot, and the restaurant is committed to simple, local produce.
It may have recently been eclipsed in economic importance by banking and financial services, but fishing remains the big thing in Iceland, embedded in the national psyche in a way hedge funds will never be. (There's an advert for Icelandic Arctic char on the walls of Keflavík airport, and the glass exterior of the Harpa concert hall - designed by Olafur Eliasson and opened in 2011 - resembles salmon scales.) The fish served here is fresh and fantastic in variety: local species of scallop, spider crab and langoustines; excellent cod, haddock and monkfish; and species rarely seen in the UK, including redfish, capelin, wolffish and Greenland halibut.
In the restaurant of the Ion Luxury Adventure Hotel, I sample Arctic char from the nearby Thingvellir Lake. An hour from Reykjavik, Ion looks like the lair of a stylish supervillain. A concrete rectangle extends from a volcanic hillside on pillars, a glass box at the end. Around it, steam rises from blowholes amid weird lava formations covered in red lichen. More smoke wafts from a narrow stream carrying water the temperature of a hot bath through fields of dune grass and bottle-green moss. As the sun briefly appears, a rainbow shoots vertically into the sky from the far shore of the lake, like some divine symbol from Le Morte d'Arthur. Little wonder the Vikings made up tales of dragons and trolls.
With sustainability at its heart, Ion follows the trend for using local materials including polished stone, reclaimed wood, recycled rubber and horsehair rugs. Its architects and interior designers are Icelanders based in California. Hot water comes from underground springs.
In the hotel's Silfra restaurant, the focus is on island produce. The Arctic char is marinated and served with mustard sauce and pickled cucumber, as gravadlax would be in Sweden. Lamb fillet from a nearby farm comes with red-wine gravy and pork cheek, cod with pearl barley, pickled red onion and cauliflower. To finish, there's crème brulee made with skyr, an Icelandic yogurt. The dishes are first-rate, executed with an untheatrical precision that showcases the raw materials. Sophisticated yet, at the same time, down-to-earth. A bit like Reykjavik itself.
Carrot cake at Stofan KaffihúsØivind Haug
Gunnar Karl Gíslason, chef at Dill, credits Iceland's foodie revolution to the economic crash in 2008. 'Overnight, everything became too expensive to import and we had to make the most of what was available at home,' he says. Named after Gíslason's favourite ingredient, the restaurant changes its menu weekly, depending on what has been foraged. Dishes include bacalao tartar, dill mayonnaise and dulse powder, and sheep-dung-smoked lamb. Gíslason's book North: the New Nordic Cuisine of Iceland (Ten Speed Press, £30) is out on 9 September. Sturlugata 5; +354 552 1522; dillrestaurant@dillrestaurant.is. Dinner about £92 for two
Close to the national parliament building, the sleek, immaculately run Fish Market showcases top-class Icelandic ingredients. Some are given an Asiatic twist (the sushi makes excellent use of freshly caught fish; duck is roasted in Szechuan spices), while smoked puffin breast is paired with polenta, salt cod with a salad of celery cashew nuts and dried cranberries. Chef Hrefna Rósa Sætran also owns the meat-focused Grill Market. Interiors are inspired by local scenery, with live moss, basalt columns, and fish skins on the walls. Adalstræti 12; +354 578 8877; www.fiskmarkadurinn.is. Dinner about £105 for two
Nora Magasin is a gastropub venture from Icelandic celebrity chef Völundur Völundarson, who also runs the prestigious Borg Restaurant next door. Head chef Akane Monavon is half-French, half-Japanese and the menu reflects this with juicy tempura lobster dusted with sumac, grilled camembert with berries and baguette, and oven-baked cod with tomatoes and sautéed potatoes. Finish with cardamom crème brûlée. Good cocktails and local micro-brewery beers, too. Pósthússtræti 9;+354 578 2010. Dinner about £40 for two
A basement café/restaurant near the town pond, Bergsson Mathús is open from 7am to 7pm, serving what might be best described as all-day brunch. Expect slow, tasty, honest food with excellent wholegrain bread and home-made rhubarb jam, bacon and soft-boiled eggs, though the pairing of serrano ham with pineapple may alarm those who grew up in the era of gammon 'Hawaiian-style'. Templararsund 3; +354 571 1822; bergsson.net. From about £10 for two
Right opposite the impressively weird Hallgrímskirkja, Café Loki looks a bit like a tourist trap, but don't be put off. The couple who own it make Icelandic flatbreads and rye loaves, accompanied with delicious smoked trout. And the ryebread ice cream suggests that the UK's brown-bread equivalent, a 1980s staple, might be due a comeback. Lokastígur 28; +354 466 2828; www.loki.is. From about £20 for two
Forréttabarinn serves starters and desserts only in a large, airy, post-industrial-style building overlooking Reykjavik harbour. The restaurant's tapas approach works especially well when it comes to sampling less orthodox Icelandic inflected dishes such as cured lambhearts, horse steak with potatoes, or salt-cod pizza. Nýlendugata 14; +354 517 1800; www.forrettabarinn.is. Dinner about £35 for four dishes and a dessert
One of London's favourite hamburger restaurants, Tommi's Burger Joint, began life in Reykjavik, in a wedge-shaped, metal-fronted kiosk down by the harbour. The snug interior of Hamborgarabúlla Tómasar is papered with 1950s Americana and the burgers and fries are wonderful. Vegetarians can replace the meat patty with a Portobello mushroom. Geirsgötu 1; +354 511 1888; www.bullan.is. From about £15 for two
Up near the Hallgrímskirkja, easy-going coffee house Reykjavik Roasters - formerly Kaffismidja Islands - has built a reputation for serving the best coffee in the capital. The company roasts its own beans in a mighty-looking machine that occupies pride of place in the L-shaped room. Kárastígur 1; +354 517 5535; www.kaffismidja.is
Café Haiti, so named because its owner married to a Haitian émigré, is a relaxed venue next to the harbour. It serves fair-trade Caribbean coffee that's roasted on the premises, as well as good croissants and Danish pastries. Geirsgata 7c; +354 588 8484; www.cafehaiti.is
Stofan Kaffihús has an interior that encapsulates Iceland's retro-boho look: all junk shop furniture and kitsch paintings. The coffee is of a high standard, as are the cakes. It also offers beer on tap, should your afternoon cappuccino drag on into the evening. Adalstræti 7; +354 567 1881
Bacalao Spanish for salted cod, traditionally left to dry for as long as a year
Crowberries Tart member of the juniper family, and one of the few berries to grow here
Dulse Deep red seaweed, typically dried, eaten as a snack or used to flavour soups and breads
Fermented shark An acquired taste - even many Icelanders avoid it - this rotten meat (known locally as hákarl) is usually saved for the midwinter festival Thorrablot
Puffin Tastes like a richer, slightly fishier chicken
Skyr Technically a cheese, but more like a rich, thick (and surprisingly low-fat) Greek yogurt
A kind of Icelandic take on Oliver Spencer, fashion brand Farmers Market has traditional clothing with a modern slant, including jumpers and cardigans made of merino wool - softer and lighter than the local variety. Nice hats, too. Farmers & Friends (www.farmersandfriends.is) is the online store. Hólmaslóð 2; +354 552 1960; www.farmersmarket.is
Geysir has everything for the authentic, outdoorsy urban hipster, including knee-high socks made from Icelandic wool as thick as loft insulation, cardigans as heavy as a naval dufflecoat, and balaclavas with beards and moustaches. An interior of salvaged wood and old photos adds to the shop's rustic feel. Skólavördustíg 16; +354 519 6000; www.geysir.com
Open Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 5pm, Kolaportid flea market is based in a customs hall right by the harbourside, close to the Reykjavik Art Museum. Buy Icelandic knitwear direct from the women who make it, or try traditional culinary delicacies such as fermented shark. Tryggvagötu 19; +354 </ 562 5030; www.kolaportid.is
An hour's drive from central Reykjavik, Ion Hotel has a spectacular setting close to Thingvellir Lake. This stylish, eco-friendly hotel epitomises the best of Iceland, from the materials used to create its ultra-modern interiors to the music on the sound system in the bar. The latter has a glass roof and is the ideal place to sample beer from a local craft brewery while watching the Northern Lights. The restaurant is excellent, too. Nesjavellir, 801 Selfoss; +354 482 3415; www.ioniceland.is. Doubles from about £350
Owned by Roshildur Jonsdóttir and Snaebjörn Thór Stefánsson, local product designers who also provided the smart, functional interiors, the six serviced flats at Grettisborg Apartment Hotel are comfortable, quiet, well-equipped and just 50 metres from Reykjavik's main street, Laugavegur. Grettisgata 53b; +354 694 7020; www.grettisborg.is. From about £70 a night
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY TABITHA JOYCE
This feature first appeared in Condé Nast Traveller September 2014
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Carrot cake at Stofan Kaffihús
Geysir
Graphic designer Omar Hauksson and daughter
Bread with rhubarb jam at Bergsson Mathús café
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