Iceland--volcanoes, glaciers, and puffin

Because school has started again and I find myself with lots of time on my hands, and because loyal reader Laura L. made a special request, let's rewind a month to my recent trip to Iceland.

To celebrate the end of our summer, Maxine S. and I took a trip to Iceland. Despite my tonsils' best efforts to derail the vacation, I made it to Reykjavik for a long weekend and met Maxine, who was at the end of her own Scandinavian travel adventure. I was excited to see a land of fire and ice--check out volcanoes, glaciers, continental rifts and many hours of sunlight--and of course to see what the food was like. I was interested to see if everything I love about Scandinavian food (read: smoked salmon) had migrated halfway across the Atlantic with the Vikings.

Well, let's just say there's a reason Iceland isn't known for its food. Travel articles focus mostly on the exotic elements of Icelandic cuisine--whale, puffin, putrefied shark--and with good reason. There's not much more to speak of. Even so, I'm turning it into a blog post, so read on!

Scallops and potatoes below, whale above

Mark Bittman told us we had to go to Sægreifiin for as-local-as-it-gets seafood, so that was our first stop. We both had the lobster soup, which was similar to a lobster bisque, though a little thinner and with much less cream. It was quite tasty, with a generous amount of lumps of tender lobster meat in the soup, though a bit salty. Maxine was brave enough to taste the whale (minke whale, allegedly not endangered and therefore legal to eat) which she said tasted more like steak than fish, was a bit tough and was unpretentious in both taste and presentation. She wanted to like it more than she did (which mirrors my feelings on some of the other food we ate--read on!) I wasn't as willing to adventure, so I stuck with the grilled scallops, which were delicious.

Mmmm, fish and ice cream

For brunch on our day spent in Reykjavik itself (when you go to Iceland, and you should because it's the most breathtakingly beautiful place I've ever seen, plan to spend not even a full day in the capital and spend the entire time you're there out in the country soaking up the amazing views) we headed to Cafe Loki, recommended by several guidebooks as a good place for traditional and well-prepared food. We each got one of the specialty platters, which had an open-faced sandwich of herring and egg, one of mashed fish and potato, and the restaurant's speciality, rye bread ice cream. We decided against the platter featuring lambshead jelly (headcheese) and putrified shark. The ice cream was definitely the highlight--it was similar in look to cookies and cream but the bits of bread retained a little more texture than the normal crumbled cookies, making me think the trick is to use day-old rye bread. The lack of extra sweetness in the flavoring was more than compensated for by the extra butter and milkfat in the ice cream, making it creamy and rich.

Guillemot

Finally we moved on to the game birds of Icelandic cuisine. We headed to Þrir Frakkar, a more upscale restaurant in the city center for our farewell to Iceland dinner. Having seen hundreds of puffins the day before, and realizing they were more like birds than cute helpless penguins, we decided to go for it and order the smoked puffin. We also shared a few entrees, including the guillemot (a seabird similar to, and potentially the same as, pigeon). To be honest, I was underwhelmed. I expected great things from Jamie Oliver's favorite restaurant in Reykjavik (though I guess it's all relative), but what we ate was not extraordinary. The puffin tasted of nothing but smoke and had no texture to speak of, while the guillemot, though well-cooked, was presented with a strident and overpowering sauce. Still, it wasn't bad, and the tasting adventure was a great way to end a vacation full of geological and geothermal adventures. Go to Iceland, be a curious taster, and come home having had the same fantastic time I did!