Icelandic Fish and Chips

Occasion: Casual dinner
Location: Icelandic Fish and Chips on Tryggvagötu in Reykjavik, Iceland (fishandchips.is)
Edibles: fish and chips, natch

Musings: This place is *really* popular. It also closes fairly early, at 9:00, and they stop letting people in about a half hour before that. So go early, and be prepared for a bit of a wait.

We got two different things to share. First was an order of the battered ling with rosemary roast potatoes. Not great. Yining and I were both surprised. You might be able to see in the photo that a puddle of oil has seeped out from the fish. The spelt and barley batter, which they advertise as "light and crispy", was in fact quite soggy and dense. I think what happened is that the oil had picked up a lot of impurities and wasn't quite up to temp, but the kitchen staff were eager to finish up for the night and didn't bother to change it. (We were almost the last table to be served.)

The other dish we ordered was the steamed haddock with coriander and a side of onion rings. Much better. The haddock was really plump and juicy and the coriander sauce was nice and fresh. The thin, delicate onion rings were also vastly superior to the potatoes, which were dry and leathery on the outside. (Which, again, could have been due to the fact that we came close to closing. Those potatoes tasted like they'd been sitting in a warming oven for an hour or more.)

So at a fish and chips place, the winner turned out to be steamed fish and onion rings. Go figure.