ICELAND: FOOD

On our first day in Reykjavik, it was lunchtime and we were hungry. While we were admiring the Leif Erikson statue in front of the Hallgrimskirkja, we noticed Café Loki across the street. It promised "Icelandic traditional food," and although we knew we were risking a tourist trap, we were hungry, parking was challenging and so we didn't want to move our car, and the restaurant was nearby:

Holy cow, for our first meal in Iceland, we hit the jackpot.

We began with a shared plate of mashed turnips, lamb headcheese, and creamed vegetable salad:

My main dish was mashed cod and potatoes topped with Gruyere cheese (A+) and served with rye bread and salad:

Bob had the "Icelandic Plate," which consisted of mashed fish (not quite as good as mine), dried fish with butter, smoked trout, flatbread with smoked lamb, and a little bowl of tiny cubes of fermented shark. Everything was delicious except the fermented shark, which was disgusting, but still, if you are in Iceland, this is a right of passage. True Travelers try the local delicacies, right?

A word must be said about this mural on the wall in the upstairs dining area. I am guessing these are scenes from the legendary Icelandic Sagas recorded during the 13th century, approximately the same time as The Canterbury Tales. I slogged my way through some of them while working towards my English Lit degree.

This part of the mural may refer to the legend of Bifrost, a rainbow that stretches between the home of the gods and earth:

Your guess is as good as mine regarding the other half of the mural:

Our first day in Iceland was an epic food day because our dinner was even better than our lunch. Our dinner was, in fact, one of the best meals we have ever eaten anywhere. The restaurant was Tapas Barinn:

It was the first meal we ate as a full group of ten:

We had nine courses of small plates, each more beautiful than the last, that included the following:

Raw lamb in a licorice sauce (served on a flat rock):

Smoked puffin with blueberry sauce:

Salmon with garlic aioli, potaotes, elderflower hollandaise sauce, and salad:

Lobster tail baked in garlic:

Beer-glazed fillet of lamb with beer-butterscotch sauce and cauliflower puree:

Pan-fried blue lingcod with lobster sauce:

Minke whale with sweet mashed potatoes:

Icelandic foal with truffle mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus:

And for dessert, white chocolate "skyr" (kind of like cheesecake) with a passion fruit coulis and a scoop of ice cream:

Wow. Just wow.

For lunch on our second day, we went to the Perlan, a futuristic glass dome perched on top of old water tanks which now house a natural history museum:

View from another side:

Nature provided the inimitable landscaping next to the building: a rich, colorful field of lupine and buttercups:

We were welcomed by these four funky, faceless, dancing figures created by Icelandic sculptor Porbjörg Pálsdóttir in 1970:

Here are a couple of close-ups:

The Út í Bláinn ("Out in the Blue") Restaurant was at the top of the dome where there was no lack of sunshine:

In fact, it was so bright that we had to leave our sunglasses on:

I had a bowl of carrot-squash soup and some of the best cod I've ever eaten--steamed and topped with a butter sauce dotted with quinoa and scallions:

In my opinion, the bread in Iceland is some of the best in the world--consistently rich, flavorful, and moist with a slightly crunchy (but not too crunchy) crust:

Dessert was a fudgy cake topped with crowberries, pistachios, and ice cream:

After lunch, we enjoyed the view from an outdoor walkway, but it was windy and cold, and I didn't stay out long:

As usual, the Hallgrimskirkja dominates the skyline:

That evening we had dinner at Grillmarkadurinn (Grill Market), a farm-to-table restaurant that was an amazing food experience.

One of the things I loved about Iceland (and later Greenland) was the artistry of food presentation. We can't remember what is beneath this floral arrangement, but really, who cares? It was a feast for the eyes:

This is potato terrine, sauerkraut, grilled filet of lamb, and wild shiitake-apple glaze. Delicious!

I am making my picture of the dessert as large as possible to show how glorious it was. That's a chocolate lava cake topped with lingonberries paired with a ball of ice cream topped with warm caramel sauce. And that knife you see? Chocolate. Isn't it gorgeous? I want all my knives to be made of chocolate:

The next day we drove the "Golden Circle" (more on that later) and stopped at Hlöđulofftđ (The Barn Loft Restaurant) located at a farm named Efstidalur II.  In the field in front of the restaurant, three exquisite Icelandic horses huddled together. Icelandic horses are small and powerful and have extravagantly thick manes and tails.

A pig wandered nonchalantly around the parking lot:

Laura tried to make friends, but piggy wanted nothing to do with her:

Four sheep were checking out the truck. This is what I would call free-range farming:

Hlöđulofftđ is more than a farm-to-table restaurant; it is a family-owned table-at-the-farm restaurant. The dining area is actually in the loft of the barn, and through a plate glass window, visitors can admire some of the livestock: 

If you watch the video embedded in the restaurant's website, you will recognize these two beautiful women as two of the four siblings (three women and one man) who run the farm:

 The menu is written in both Icelandic and English:

Some brave soul, I'm not sure who, had the "Wild Viking"--peanut butter, blueberry jelly, red onion, and lettuce:

I had the "Meatzza"--no bread and copious amounts of cheese in a bowl-shaped hamburger patty smeared in pizza sauce:

One of the women bought a few of these "Happy Marriage" tarts to share around. Good idea. After all, we were spending an awful lot of time together.

There were creepy stuffed animals (fox and puffin?) watching us from atop the water cooler:

Here are a few more random food shots. We ate one more meal at Cafe Loki. I had lamb stew and Bob had some open-face sandwiches. They were good, but not as good as our first experience there.

 We visited a deli during our city tour on the first day and were impressed by the wide variety of fish:

And finally, these Icelanders take their fish seriously. I have never been to another hotel that had cod liver oil and shot glasses available as part of the breakfast buffet. I think cod liver oil is an important source of Vitamin D in Iceland, which would be important during the dark winter months, but why was it there in June?