Fish Market

Location: Fish Market on Aðalstræti in Reykjavik, Iceland (fiskmarkadurinn.is)
Occasion: Our fancy dinner of the trip
Edibles: chef's tasting menu (8900 ISK, or ~$75), courses detailed below

Musings: A friend absolutely raved about this place, so I went ahead and made reservations well in advance of our trip. We actually came here twice, once for lunch and once for dinner. (Since the cod dish I ordered at the lunch turned out to be the sixth course of the dinner, I figured one post would cover it.)

The restaurant has a trendy, eco-hip style of décor with lots of natural woods, rough-hewn stone, etc. The dining room is split into two levels. We ate both times on the lower level but I prefer the look of the upper level, particularly for lunch. Being half underground, the lower level is quite dim and dreary during the day. Something to keep in mind if you're making reservations.

Most of the smaller tables in the lower level are up against the back wall, with one person sitting on a long bench that runs the length of the wall, and the other person in a chair. I was the person on the bench both times, and I note that the fake plastic bamboo plants were quite bothersome, poking me in the back and snagging in my hair multiple times.

As with the tapas place, our table was quite close to the kitchen, affording us a good view to spy on the team in action. The chefs were pretty calm and the place was scrupulously clean. However, the long and narrow space didn't look to be very well laid-out and people did seem to get in each other's way a fair amount.

Our first courses were langoustine tempura with a seaweed salad and honeydew melon, and mussels with bonito in lobster broth.

A less-than-stunning start. I thought the deep-frying completely overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the langoustine, and broth for the mussels was likewise quite powerfully smoky and pungent. I also found an untrimmed beard on one of the mussels. Tsk, tsk.

Our third course was mink whale sashimi with two sauces - a wasabi cream cheese, and a lemon soy sauce.

The whale tasted the most like beef to me; Yining perceived more fishiness and likened it to a gamey tuna. I liked the wasabi cream cheese for its richness but Yining thought it was an odd note.

What struck me the most about this course (and the sashimi I ordered at the lunch) was how bad the knifework was. The whale was presented in clumsily hacked, lopsided slices. It's like the chef only got the basic concept of serving raw fish, completely missing the finesse element of Japanese culinary philosophy.

Next up was a romaine salad with wasabi dressing, fried quail eggs, soy jelly and mandarin oranges. The dressing was lovely and delicate but balance of the salad was off, with too much of the salty soy jelly.

Salmon nigiri, salmon cucumber maki, tuna and scallop sashimi.

Again, substandard knifework, particularly on the tuna. The rice in the sushi was horrible, overcooked and almost mashed into a paste. The quality of the seafood was good, but frankly you can get better made sushi at the takeout place around the corner from my apartment back home.

Cod with cherry sauce, an unidentifiable white sauce, sunchokes and celery, on top of some kind of purée.

Probably my favorite course, but still, there were problems. First, there was just too much going on. Too many flavors and sauces piled on top of the wonderful fish, a cacophony where a couple of strong accents were all you needed. When I had it at lunch, the cod was perfection - really rich and tender, each flake almost like silken tofu on the tongue. At dinner, one piece of fish was significantly smaller than the other and got overcooked to the point of dryness. Also, the dish was much saltier the second time around. And the sunchokes were poorly trimmed.

I know, I sound like a Grumpy Gus. But we went in with certain expectations and instead just kept getting disappointed every course.

Next, chargrilled salmon with potatoes, with a side of broccoli-raisin-walnut salad in creamy dressing.

The salmon was cooked perfectly but that broccoli salad was the worst thing in the whole meal. I think the first word that popped into my head upon tasting it was "disgusting." I almost spit it out.

The final savory course - lamb with sweet potato croquettes and shittake mushroom.

The famous Icelandic lamb was terrific, and cooked to perfect doneness. But, once again, the chronic problem of questionable composition interfering with the purity of the raw ingredients. The dish needed salt, the sauce was too sweet, and the mushroom overpowered the other flavors.

Dessert was white chocolate cheesecake; chocolate cake; crème brûlée; chocolate ice cream and pineapple sorbet. Unremarkable. Unrelieved sweetness across the different items - a little acidity for contrast would have been welcome.

Bottom line, I just don't like what this chef does. On the raw dishes, not enough care with the knifework. On the cooked dishes, not enough editing. Instead of fumbled attempts at innovative flavors, I'd love to see some restraint. Emphasis on finesse and skill. Let the amazing local ingredients shine. They deserve it.

Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur

Occasion: More snacking after, really, a very modest pub crawl
Location: Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur ("the best hot dogs in town") - as for location, I can only tell you that it's down by the harbor, but it's not hard to find because downtown Reykjavik is that small (bbp.is)
Edibles: hog dogs with the works

Musings: Quelle tragédie!!! The crazy hot dog with shrimp salad and mashed potatoes that I thought was an Icelandic thing is in fact.... a Swedish thing. Blerg. Hot dog fail. (FYI, it's called tunnbrödsrulle* and Bourdain had it at a stand called Maxi Grillen.)

But back to the hot dog at hand.... Apparently Bæjarins Beztu was once named the best hot dog stand in Europe? That food reviewer must have been on drugs. The hot dog they serve here is basically just a New York dirty water dog. It's about $2, and comes with standard condiments like ketchup, mustard, fried onions.

My crushing disappointment was slightly mitigated by our very amusing company. A little Korean man plopped down beside us on the picnic bench and started a lament on how difficult it was to find his son a nice Korean girl in Iceland. "We're not Korean," we tell him. "Close enough," was his reply. A little later, the man's Russian business partner joined us. They have a fish export business. Local color - gotta love it.

[*Note: Okay, now I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of tunnbrödsrulle. I will attempt to make some at Oktoberfest IV.]

Tapas Barinn

Occasion: Continuation of snacking
Location: Tapas Barinn on Vesturgötu in Reykjavik, Iceland (tapas.is)
Edibles: grilled squid with chili and garlic; Icelandic sea-trout with sweet pepper salsa; langoustines baked in garlic; a skewer of neck of pork in romesco sauce; ovenbaked monkfish wrapped in Serrano ham with pesto

Musings: Tapas Barinn is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the food was pretty tasty. On the other hand, the whole place could have used a good scrub and the kitchen is a disorganized disaster.

The place was hopping busy when we stopped by, so we were escorted to a couchy sort of area to wait. The coffee table was sticky from spilled drinks, and so were the drink menus. The dim lighting only helps hide what you see, not what you touch.

After a glass of wine, a booth near the entrance opened up. It was a bit chilly from the constantly opening door, but they anticipated it and provided each booth with some blankets. As a bonus, our booth was right across the open kitchen and I could easily observe the goings-on.

We started with three plates. The squid was okay, not very memorable. The pork skewer was cooked unevenly - the top part that I ate was overcooked (presumably because it was closer to the flame) whereas the lower part that Yining had was nice and juicy. Of the three, the sea-trout was the best. Scandinavian fish continues to impress.

During the slow progression of dishes, we were able to observe the kitchen in action. Here's their problem: the menu's too big for so small a kitchen. The restaurant has two fairly large dining rooms, both serviced by a long, narrow kitchen the size of your average hallway. They had about six people in there, bustling around, each doing their own thing. They also had an underling popping up and down a ladder to get miscellaneous plates and condiments from the attic. You could tell that the kitchen was behind and being harried by the waitresses for food, and yet sometimes there'd be a dozen plates waiting for pickup.

With a space like that, you need to really be smart. Pare down the menu. Design front-loaded dishes and do the bulk of your work in the mise en place before dinner service. Have people work in a single area in the kitchen, performing a single task (e.g. grilling, saucing) for all the dishes instead of having one person responsible for completing a single dish.

(Tia Pol has this down to an art. Their kitchen is maybe six feet square and they produce exquisite food, hot and fast.)

While spying on the kitchen, we saw them produce a baked langoustine dish that looked pretty tasty. I hopped across the aisle and their expeditor confirmed that it was the langoustine with garlic (though they call it lobster). We ordered one. The langoustines had that slightly mealy texture that frozen seafood can get. A second underwhelming shellfish experience.

As a pleasant surprise, the kitchen sent over a monkfish on the house. (I guess the expeditor doesn't get to talk to diners much? I'm not above flirting with restaurant staff for free food but I honestly barely spoke to the guy.)

Each dish was $8-11 dollars, which doesn't sound like much but does tend to add up when you're ordering lots of tiny dishes and getting drinks as well. For what amounted to a hearty snack or a light dinner, we spent enough to pay for a three-course meal with drinks at a fairly nice restaurant in New York. Eating out in Iceland is expensive!!

Noodle Station

Occasion: Pre-pub-crawl snack
Location: Noodle Station at the intersection of Skólavörðustígur (damn - that took 5 min to type!) and Týsgata in Reykjavik, Iceland
Edibles: beef noodle soup (950 ISK or ~$8)

Musings: We weren't expecting much and popped in out of curiousity more than anything. How *is* Chinese food in Iceland?

Pretty mediocre, as it turns out. Neither the beef nor the broth were very good - the former being tough and chewy, and the latter tasting completely artificial and chemical-y. Pass on this one.

Indian Mango

Occasion: Dinner with Yining (while it's full light out - weird)
Location: Indian Mango on Frakkastigur in Reykjavik, Iceland (indianmango.is)
Edibles: chicken tikka masala, aloo gobi (stewed potatoes and cauliflower), tandoori lamb kebabs and two sides of rice (we're Chinese - we like our rice)

Musings: The food was great, on par with what I've had in cities with major Indian populations (i.e. Vancouver, New York, London - that's as close as I can tell on authenticity, having never been to actual India). The spices were well-balanced, the meats were tender, the rice, fragrant and fluffly.

The only slight ding would be for price. The meal ran us about $100 after tip, and that's with no beverages at all. A similar meal at Brick Lane would probably come to about $80 all told. So I figure the math works out something like this: New York real estate < Iceland's short tourist season + cost of importing all of the exotic ingredients, and probably a goodly number of the mundane ones.

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.

Sægreifinn

Occasion: Afternoon snack
Location: Sægreifinn ("Sea Baron"), a seafood shack on Geirsgata down by the water, in Reykjavik, Iceland (saegreifinn.is)
Edibles: humarsupa (lobster soup)

Musings: I wasn't as impressed by this place as Mark Bittman. On the plus side, the soup was extremely flavorful and full of lobster chunks. On the minus side, I thought the broth was too thin, and both the broth and the lobster tasted to me like they'd been frozen. Iceland's tourist season is short - just a few months in the summer - and I guess it makes sense to make huge batches in the off-season and freeze them. But you can taste it. The vegetables flavors aren't as bright and the lobster meat gets a little bit mealy.

A giant mug with some bread on the side will run you about 750 Icelandic kronor, or just over $10. It's good for a snack, being both filling and warming. (Even in August, you need a medium-weight jacket during the day and more at night. You can also tell the locals from the tourists on the street because the locals are in t-shirts and the tourists are wearing winter coats, hats and scarves.)

Nord Seafood Bar at Keflavik Airport

Occasion: Layover on the way to Stockholm
Location: Nord Seafood Bar at Keflavik Airport in Reykjavik, Iceland (kefairport.is/English/ShopsRestaurants/107/default.aspx)
Edibles: smoked salmon open-faced sandwich with lettuce and sliced hardboiled egg, with a dill honey-mustard

Musings: Hailing from the west coast, I admit that I've always sneered at Atlantic salmon. No more. The smoked salmon they were serving at Nord - at an airport, no less - was nothing short of spectacular. Really rich and silky, not too fishy or salty. Perfection, full stop. I've never had smoked salmon so good.

An unexpectedly delicious start to our trip.

[Postscript, 8/21: We ate here again before our flight back. I tried the shrimp sandwich this time, which was not as good as the salmon. The shrimps were flavorless and the bread was soggy, like it'd been sitting there for a while.]

Reykjavik City Guide

(Updated 2011)

FISH AND CHIPS:

• Icelandic Fish and Chips. Go early, and be prepared for a bit of a wait.

INDIAN:

• Indian Mango. Good, but pricey.

YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY:

• Sægreifinn's lobster soup. Mark Bittman loved it; I thought meh.
• Fancy seafood: Fish Market. Yining and I were underwhelmed but Meredith loved it.

Note: You can also search for other Reykjavik blog entries using the tag "ISL-Reykjavik."