Restaurants in Iceland
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Indian Mango
Indian Mango specialises in Goan food, serving beef, duck, fish and some vegie mains. Its chef – poached from a five-star restaurant – makes up light, spicy, delicious dishes. Its bestselling (seasonal) creation is an Icelandic-Indian hybrid completely unique to this restaurant – svartfugl (guillemot) marinaded in Indian spices.
reviewed
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Babalú
More inviting than your own living room, this first-floor cafe is ubercute. It only sells tea, coffee, hot chocolate and the odd crêpe, but once you’ve settled into one of its snug corners you won’t want to move. A teeny wooden balcony gives you a great vantage point over Skólavörðustígur, and in summer there’s occasional live music.
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Við Tjörnina
People return again and again to this famed seafood establishment, tucked away near Tjörnin. It serves up beautifully presented Icelandic feasts such as guillemot with port, garlic langoustine, or the house speciality marinated cod chins (far more delicious than they sound!). The restaurant itself is wonderfully distinctive – it feels like a quirky upperclass 1950s drawing room.
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Bæjarins Beztu
Icelanders are utterly addicted to hot dogs, and they swear the best are those from Bæjarins Beztu, a van situated near the harbour that’s patronised by Bill Clinton! Use the vital sentence Eina með öllu (‘One with everything’) to get one with mustard, tomato sauce (ketchup), rémoulade and crunchy onions.
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Icelandic Fish & Chips
A reader-recommended restaurant serving hearty portions of…well, have a guess! It’s good-value fare (for Iceland, at least), and the owners have put their own singular slant on it with a range of ‘Skyronnaises’ – skyr-based sauces (eg rosemary and green apple) that add an unusual zing to this most traditional of dishes.
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Sægreifinn
Eccentric Sægreifinn serves up fresh seafood in what looks almost like a 1950s English chip shop…except for the stuffed seal. The owner is a sprightly old gent who buys and cooks all the fish himself – lobster soup and fish kebabs are specialities. He only speaks Icelandic, so make sure you know what you’re asking for!
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Tapas Barinn
Indecisive types will have a tough time at this outstanding tapas bar, with over 50 different dishes on the menu – a thousand possible combinations! Alongside familiar Spanish nibbles such as mixed olives and patatas bravas, you’ll find Icelandic ingredients turned into tasty titbits – puffin with blueberries, saltfish, and pan-fried lobster tails. Expect to spend around Ikr3900 per person for a full meal.
reviewed
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Þrír Frakkar
Owner-chef Úlfar Eysteinsson has built up an excellent reputation at this snug little restaurant – apparently a favourite of Jamie Oliver’s. Specialities include salt cod, anglerfish and plokkfiskur (fish stew) with black bread. You can also sample nonfish items, such as seal, puffin, reindeer and whale steaks.
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Á Næstu Grösum
This first-rate vegie restaurant, in a cheerful orange room overlooking Laugavegur, offers several daily specials. It uses seasonal organic veg, and inventive dressings guaranteed to give even lettuce new appeal. Things get extra spicy on Indian nights (Friday and Saturday), and organic wine and beer are available.
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Hereford Steakhouse
This modern 1st-floor steakhouse grills up top-class steaks (of beef, lamb, turkey, veal and whale), priced by weight and cut. You can pick from fillets, T-bones, rib eyes and entrecôtes, and watch as they’re cooked at the grilling station in the centre of the dining room. There’s a good red-wine list.
reviewed
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Santa Maria
A genuine Mexican restaurant in the heart of town, Santa Maria is run by Ernesto, originally from Mexico City, who brought his mum to Iceland to train his chefs in cooking up authentic enchiladas, mole, chicken tortillas and the rest. Relaxed, and extraordinarily good value.
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Eldsmiðjan
Reykjavík residents are devoted to the pizzeria Eldsmiðjan, tucked away on a quiet residential street. Its fiercely busy takeaway serves the best pizzas in the city, baked in a brick oven fired by Icelandic birch – or you can sit down to devour.
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Kaffi Sólon
Decked out with white-leather seats and oversized artwork, this ultracool bistro (and nightspot) offers tasty international dishes at reasonable prices. Vegetarians should head here for the best quiche in town.
reviewed
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Krua Siam
Eating Thai noodles while staring out into a blizzard can be a bit strange, but Krua Siam does a darn good job of transporting tastebuds to the Land of Smiles, despite being a mere 40km from the Arctic Circle.
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Brynja
Slightly out of the centre but well worth the effort to get to, this legendary sweet shop is known across Iceland for the best ice cream in the country.
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Nonnabiti
Nonnabiti serves burgers and hot dogs.
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Friðrik V
If you’re going to choose one place to splash out on a gourmet Icelandic meal, this is the right place to do it. Friðrik’s eponymous master chef helped create our ‘Unofficial Foodie Tour’ – and is known throughout the country for championing the Slow Food Movement. Each dish is a carefully prepared medley of locally sourced ingredients presented in a forward-thinking manner. There’s skyr brulée, filet mignon carpaccio, rhubarb sorbet, langoustine with roasted veggies, skyr mozzarella caprese…the list goes on. In summer, the owners organise a weekly ‘food safari’ (Ikr20,000) where they take visitors around Eyjafjörður to collect ingredients for their evening…
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RUB 23
Pulling off ‘minimal chic’, trendy RUB lets patrons create their own marinades (or ‘rubs’) for their fresh fish and lamb. If you’re not so keen on turning your meal into a science project, then you can select from their sushi remix – Icelandic maki prepared with savoury Japanese ingredients. Then, for dessert (called ‘sweet rubs’) you can have a ‘chocolate three-way’. Is the bark a little bit bigger than the bite? Perhaps. But you have to give the place credit for thinking outside the bento box.
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Vox
The Hilton’s five-star restaurant serves up superb seasonal dishes – think pink-footed goose with caramelised apples – and there’s usually a vegie option. The waiters sometimes bring out extra little treats for you to try – for example, their amazing ‘invisible gazpacho’! The daytime bistro puts on a recommended Sunday-brunch hot buffet (Ikr2850/1425 for adults/children six to 12 years) – gorge on fruit, bread, prawns (shrimps), bacon, eggs, sausage and pancakes until you burst.
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Kaffi Hljómalind
This commendable organic and Fair Trade cafe is run on a not-for-profit basis and serves as a meeting-place for Reykjavík’s radicals. The interior has been cobbled together in retro style, with wooden floors, 1970s orange-flowered wallpaper, sofas and armchairs, chintzy lampshades and a battered piano. The short menu is composed of burritos, lasagne, soup, bagels, and toast with hummus, and service is entirely erratic; you’ll either get this place or you won’t!
reviewed
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Fiskmarkaðurinn
Don’t let the weird dead-bony-fish logo put you off – this new restaurant excels in infusing Icelandic seafood with Far-Eastern flavours. Ingredients have a strong focus on local produce. For example, there’s the ‘Farmers’ Market’ menu, which takes specialities from around Iceland (lobsters from Höfn, salmon from the Þjórsá, halibut from Breiðafjörður) and introduces them to spicy chillis, papaya, mango, coconut, satay glazes and ponzu sauce.
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Fiskfélagið
Built on top of part of the old harbour, this brand-new restaurant is one of the city’s cosiest, with its hotchpotch seating, candles and copper lamps. The menu is a truly ambitious sampling of world cuisines (and in spite of the restaurant’s name, the focus isn’t really on fish): begin with slow-cooked Spanish serrano ham, travel to South America for skate with black-bean purée, and finish with Tahitian banana and coconut cake!
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Nýlenduvöruverslun Hemma & Valda
Hemmi and Valdi’s Colonial Store is a mismatched, beat-up, heavy-on-the-irony cafe. This relaxed place was set up by a couple of young dads to sell coffee, beer and, erm, baby clothes. There are huge windows perfect for street-gaping, comforting pottery mugs, a warm welcome for kids and a short menu of coffees and cakes. At night, this transmutes into a great little bar selling some of the cheapest booze in Reykjavík.
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Askur Brasserie
Close to the big hotels on Suðurlandsbraut, this relaxed family restaurant is popular with tourists and locals alike. Despite its noncentral location, it’s wise to book on Friday and Saturday. There’s a long menu of burgers, steaks, pasta, lamb, fish and sizzling fajitas, many of which come with soup and a free visit to the salad bar (loosen your belts). The weekday lunchtime buffet is good value at Ikr1790.
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Gamli Baukur
The lovely timber-framed restaurant-bar serves excellent food (juicy burgers, succulent fish soup and a zingy curry bouillabaisse) and flavourful coffee among shiny nautical relics. Live music and a sweeping terrace makes it the most happenin’ place in northeast Iceland. It is one of those rare places that manages to be both a favourite local hangout and a wonderfully friendly place for tourists.
reviewed