Hi internet! This is the third and last installment of my Iceland blog post series. In case you missed it, my boyfriend and I did a 10-day road trip around Iceland. I already covered Iceland's amazing nature and charming towns. In this post, I'll give some quick snapshots of the food we ate.
General thoughts
I was not frugal during the vacation and ate out every single meal. Because of this, I didn't go to a grocery store and I kind of regret that, since it would have been interesting to learn more about what the regular Icelander eats.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I was surprised to find out that the restaurants in Iceland are excellent. I'm spoiled with a great restaurant scene in NYC, but the restaurants in Iceland were on average even better. The chefs are great and they are working with some very fresh ingredients, namely fish, seafood, and lamb.
The food is hearty and not spicy, as you'd expect Scandinavian food to be. As someone with Eastern European heritage, this is a palate that is very familiar to me. It's heavy on meat and fish, carbs, and fresh vegetables, with a good amount of dairy.
There are a few foods I wanted to try out but didn't get around to, such as hakarl, which is fermented shark. If I ever go back, I'll cover that here.
Skyr
Skyr is a delicious, light Icelandic yogurt that goes really well with fruits and anything sweet. I find it less tangy than regular yogurt and I ate it pretty much every morning. It's also used commonly in desserts, such as skyr cheesecake (the white half-circle cake below).
Soups!
There are really good-quality soups to be found in Iceland. One of the best meals we had was at Fjallakaffi, a cozy rustic cafe basically in the middle of nowhere in northeastern Iceland.
I got vegetable soup (left), my boyfriend got lamb soup (right), and we shared a moss soup (center). All three soups were great, but the moss soup was memorable. It felt soft and tasted kind of sweet, so I'm glad we had it as a dessert. I hope to one day make it but, will I be able to find edible moss in the NYC area? 😭
Seafood
I like fish but I'm not crazy about it. That said, the fish in Iceland was so fresh and good that I started to eat it almost every meal. There's a variety of fish available, but the artic chair is especially good.
I also tried mashed fish stew (plokkfiskur), which is a good comfort food.
Iceland is also known for its langoustine, which is a lobster that is smaller and softer than the Maine lobster. It also has a slightly sweeter, more delicate flavor. We forgot to take pictures of it, sorry!
Meat
Iceland has more sheep than people, and they're grazing all over the country. Fresh lamb is prominent on every Icelandic menu.
Icelanders also eat horse meat. My boyfriend ordered some and it tastes pretty much like beef, but slightly gamier.
Wrapping up
(This was just an incredible hot chocolate I had at Kaffibrennslan in Reyjavik.)
Thank you for going on this journey with me through various aspects of travelling in Iceland. Next post will be back to usual programming; I'll be covering baking scones. See you then!
Tuck
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