Icelandic Cuisine
6 July 2019
So, we’ve heard about the notorious Icelandic food.
Fermented shark, stinky skate, sheep heads, sour blubber, ram testicles... sure, it’s not exactly the most appealing of cuisines compared to many other places we’ve been. Obviously, in its subarctic location, Icelandic food has traditionally been considered a “cuisine of wants” so they say. Not much grows here naturally and resources are very limited, so people historically would eat whatever they could get their hands on. Apparently, in the olden days, the lack of salt deposits and lack of resources to boil seawater for salt meant creative preservation techniques were needed to keep food over the very long winter. Typically, foods were smoked over sheep’s dung or fermented in the acidic whey leftover from making skyr, giving off a rather ammonia-like smell and taste to the fish. I do like beer and pickles and sauerkraut, but some things just should not be fermented! Sure, that’s easy for me to say now, but there was a time when people here didn’t have a choice.
The modern advances in green housing, improved preservation methods, and the ability to import from all over the world means that the average Icelander doesn’t really eat this food anymore. Local foods – especially fish and arctic berries – are still very much celebrated similar in ideal to the “New Nordic Cuisine” spreading through Scandinavia, while surprisingly pizza and hot dogs are ubiquitous on the island as well. Iceland has actually become famous for their hot dogs, which I understand is a holdover from when US forces occupied the island in WWII. The Americans eventually left, but the Icelanders’ love for hot dogs and hamburgers has lived on.
Not all of the traditional food in Iceland is quite so terrifying either. I’m looking forward to trying some specialties like the mashed fish and potato stew plokkfiskur, the famous rúgbrauð rye bread that is slow-baked by being buried in the ground next to a hot spring, the beignet-like kleinur, and of course the yogurt-like cheese called skyr whose popularity has spread around the world now. Along with the incredibly fresh fish from the cold North Atlantic, meals in Iceland are not really as scary as people say.
In all, it’s just another adventure!
On the corner of Lokastigur in the Neighborhood of the Gods, right in the shadow of Hallgrimskirkja, is Café Loki, a little restaurant/cafe that serves great coffee and local specialties! It was still very early, but they were serving from their regular menu and didn’t seem to have a different breakfast section. We ordered a very much needed coffee to shake away the weariness of the flight. We added to that two of Loki’s specialties – their rúgbrauð topped with pickled herring, and their rúgbrauð ice cream. Breakfast of champions! The herring was just majestic. The pickled fish over a bed of hard-boiled eggs and a thick slather of butter on the sweet rye was a delightfully unexpected combo. The pickled herring here is different... we are familiar with the German ones, but these have a more, I don’t know... crisp flavor. It’s difficult to describe. It could be the pickle they use or the type of herring, but I found I prefer these greatly over the German ones I’m used to. Rúgbrauð is naturally sweet and dense from the rye and the caramelized sugars from the long, slow cooking. It is really a phenomenal bread, if a bit heavy (not to mention the calories!) The ice cream was a nice new way to view the traditional bread, and it worked very well as a refreshing treat.
Maybe all the warnings of Icelandic food were for naught, as we are off to a pretty good start!
