Iceland

Icelandic lobster soup warms a chill evening

Icelandic lobster soup warms a chill evening

Posted on by Pat and David
We had read that Iceland's famous ‶lobster soup″ was a special dish widely served at the winter holidays. Given that there's only about four hours of daylight at Christmas, Icelanders definitely need something to cheer them up. But during our Reykjavik visit in late August, lobster soup was ubiquitous on the city's menus. So much for seasonality — or don't believe everything you read on the Internet. According to Iceland Fisheries, the lobster season is April into September All of our research — including asking locals — pointed us to the Seabaron, or Sægreifinn in Icelandic (Geirsgata 101, Reykjavík; +354 553 1500; facebook.com/saegreifinn.seabaron). Everyone agreed that it was famed for lobster soup. The casual grill house squats at the harbor's edge in a lurid green...Read More
Skyr cheese launched a thousand longboats

Skyr cheese launched a thousand longboats

Posted on by Pat and David
On our first day in Reykjavik, we wondered if we'd stumbled into some modern version of Gulliver's Brobdingnag. Everyone was … so tall. And fit. And wearing technical gear. They looked like they were about to dash up Iceland's volcanos, dive for lobsters in its fjords, or — at the very least — set sail in a high-prowed boat to discover a new continent or pillage an old one. It was a very Viking moment. The secret behind all this outsized vigor (or so we were told) was skyr. This Nordic cousin of Greek yogurt is so well-drained and thick that it's legally classified as a cheese. What distinguishes it from various other cultured milk products is that heated skimmed milk is inoculated with traditional...Read More
Icelandic sea salt explodes flavors of summer favorites

Icelandic sea salt explodes flavors of summer favorites

Posted on by Pat and David
We had planned to be in Iceland about now—until the late summer flareup of the novel coronavirus. We had hoped to go to Reykjanesi way up in the northwest quarter of Iceland called Westfjords. The plan was to visit the Saltverk (saltverk.com) facility there, founded in 2011 by Björn Jónsson and Gísli Grímsson. (If you caught the Iceland segment in season three of Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, it's Gísli who shows the Scottish chef around.) Sea salt harvesting has a long history in the Westfjords, where the king of Denmark established a saltworks in the late 18th century. It used geothermal energy, since Iceland is basically one craggy cap on a rift in the earth that leaks hot water, steam, and sometimes lava. The Danes needed...Read More