Seafarer's Fare - Iceland

Iceland, the land just below the Earth’s summit, where winter becomes a six-month-long night, illuminated only by the moon and Aurora, and summer translates into an incredibly never-ending twilight.

Lobster soup with fresh bread and Icelandic butter

We stopped by on our way to the UK – a long detour, I know - and spent four amazing autumn days in this beautiful land. Not long enough to explore it all, but sufficient to whet our appetite for more – we must definitely come back.

Puffins at a gift-shop, Reykjavik old harbour

On our first evening in Reykjavik, still jetlagged from a long journey from Beijing, we went to the old harbour, where you can find fish restaurants and local food. Overlooked by the nearby, recently built, amazing Opera House, there are still working docks in the area and some of  the old warehouses have been converted into gift shops and restaurants, a very charming place.

We stopped at the Sea Baron (Neptune), or Sægreifinn in Icelandic. The place looks more like a fisherman’s cabin than a restaurant, but a sign offering lobster soup sounded very enticing. The restaurant was founded by Kjartan Halldórsson, a former sea cook who has turned his hand from feeding sailors to feeding visitors for the past 10 years. The Sea Baron first opened as a fish store, but then tourists started asking him to cook the fish for them. As you go in, there are some long, thin tables arranged for visitors, but you must go into the next room, the kitchen, to place your order; it is more like a home than a restaurant. At the beginning, we didn't understand how it was supposed to work, and we sat there for a few minutes waiting for someone to come and take our order; so if you have a chance to visit, remember that you have to go into the kitchen first. After a while, Mr Halldórsson appeared, with a big smile, checking that everybody had food and drinks. He was very kind, and although we didn't speak Icelandic and he didn't speak English, he looked very friendly and offered sweets to our little ones.

The Sea Baron

We were not too daring with our choice of food, so we tried the lobster soup, served with lots of delicious fresh bread and creamy butter, and the monkfish and halibut grilled kebab, with vegetables. The kebabs were incredibly expensive, as most food is in Iceland is - for European standards.

local beer, of course

The restaurant, or cabin, also serves “harðiskur” the dried stuff that locals seem to relish (available on request, but we didn’t try it). Other dishes include: eels, Icelandic cod, trout, salmon, lump-sucker, blue ling, lemon sole, marinated herring and other delicacies. More controversial foods: Minke whale meat (a legally caught and not endangered species), although in the summer there were demonstrators in the harbour dressed as whales with plackards reading “Meet Us, Don’t Eat Us”, apparently orders went up. Cormorant, puffin and shark are also on the menu.

For more on our family adventures in Iceland, check out various articles at www.chelinmiller.blogspot.com: Skogar sunrise, Icelandic horses (in Spanish, I am afraid, still worth looking at the images) and Iceland in  William Morris's eyes.