What's for dinner

Some thoughts about Icelandic food…

1) Our first dinner in Iceland was Domino’s Pizza. Now some people would claim that this really breaks the spirit of traveling overseas. I respond with the following. A) I had another one of my medical misadventures on the plane (I owe Kim everything in the world for helping me through it) and neither of us were in an adventurous mood, B) jet lag killed any desire for us to leave our hotel room and C) it was the best Domino’s Pizza I have had in my entire life. Seriously, it was freaking awesome.

2) We went on a number of bus tours, which meant pre-arranged stops at tourist locations for lunch. At one we were requested to try the meat soup, which I must admit was quite tasty. However, you have to question any soup that is simply defined as being flavored by meat. Could be beef, could be lamb, could be some other small creature, you can never be quite sure.

3) As is the case with most of Europe in Iceland there is this unnerving tendency to serve every sandwich with some sort of unnamed sauce. In England everything comes lathered with butter whereas in Iceland it appears that Thousand Island dressing is the condiment of choice. This led to Kim’s continual request that our meals come as listed on the menu and not with some sort of mystery attachment.

4) Per Kim (since I never tried it) the Icelandic Brie was just off the charts good. I personally found the Icelandic hot dog to be quite good while Kim did not enjoy it in the least. It is a natural casing dog much like the Bohemian hot dogs I had as a kid and came with a mustard sauce that was quite like a remoulade. Personally, I just like the fact that I went all the way to Iceland to have a hot dog.

5) At one point we had dinner in a Mexican restaurant in which I ordered a fish and chips and Kim ordered a chicken sandwich. This made perfect sense at the time. I believe it was because they wanted thirty bucks for fajitas.

6) One of the best things we did was have dinner at a tapas restaurant (recommended by Canadians who while we can fault their health care they are good at finding places for dinner). This let us try a number of Icelandic delicacies as well as give me a chance to try a few things I had never had before like escargot. We had puffin, the national bird and mascot, which was kind of oily and gamy and not that great. Monkfish was also quite good but the star of the night was the minke whale. Yes, I tried whale and it was delicious. Like a cross between tuna and a really good steak. That and a few other dishes made it one of my best meals ever.

7) Yes, you can complain that we dined on several cute creatures, especially when you include our lamb lunch the next day that was just exquisite. I would just like to state that on our whale / bird watching expedition we saw neither whales nor puffins so we felt like they owed us for not being there. And the lamb was just too good to pass up.

8) Next to our hotel was this bakery that we passed every day but only ate at on our last day. Which was a mistake because they had this cinnamon roll covered with fudge that would make you end your diet in a second. I’m not a big pastry type person but this was pretty amazing. Inexpensive as well, which was a great change of pace.

9) At one point Kim ordered a hamburger that came with a fried egg on top of the bun. You know that you have spent a long time travelling when that seems to be a perfectly normal way to serve a hamburger.

10) If I learned one thing from our trip it is this: you can never go wrong when you order the lobster feast.