Offbeat Eats

N1 is probably Iceland’s largest retailer, running a rather large (by Icelandic standards) chain of over 100 gas stations, ranging from self-service kiosks (which proved to be relatively good at defending themselves from any attempt of mine to exchange a US-based credit card for diesel, even my Chip-and-PIN card) to full service stations. But one thing is almost a given if you are doing like I and travel around Iceland, you will eventually find yourself hungry and in need of food, and through location, time, or other factors, N1 is going to be your best option. Indeed, I’d say that in a substantial fraction of Iceland, the nearest prepared food of any sort is actually an N1 station…

One of our first stops heading west from Klaustur was Skógafoss. Skógafoss is one of South Iceland’s most impressive waterfalls, about 75 feet wide and 200 feet tall, with a large enough water volume that it generates a fair amount of wind and mist. Like most of the major waterfalls, it also has it’s own legend. No, not trolls this time, but Vikings, apparently one early Viking settler, Prasi Þórólfsson, hid a chest of gold under the falls that was never found except for a large ring from the side of the chest. If it’s not those troublesome trolls, it’s the Vikings, I guess. Oh, and Skógafoss also sports a hot dog truck. The Skógafoss Country Wagon can generally be found in the main parking lot of Skógafoss, near the campsites and the laundry area for hikers.

Our eighth day exploring the Ring Road of Iceland was a rather impressive day, including stops at the famous Jökulsárlón(the “Glacier Lagoon”) and Svartifoss (the “Black Waterfall”, an impressive waterfall in front of a backdrop of basalt columns), along with plentiful hiking and a stop for Jöklaís (“Glacier Ice”) ice cream. It was yet another busy day of sightseeing, hiking, and driving, and we ended up pulling into our destination, Kirkjubæjarklaustur (whose name is ponderous even by local standards, we noticed that most folks call it simply “Klaustur”), at a fairly late hour looking for dinner. Well, Kirkjubæjarklaustur doesn’t have a heck of a lot to offer. While having some nice features in itself, like a waterfall, and some really interesting basalt columns), Klaustur’s main attraction is location: it’s pretty much the only settlement on the southern coast between Vík and Höfn which offers services, including the ever-present N1 station, a few modest hotels, and the like. Heck, there’s basically three places to eat (the hotel, the gas station, and the cafe). After perusing the menus of each, we ended up choosing the cafe: Systrakaffi (if you were hoping for the N1 gas station, don’t worry, I’ll get to them in a few reviews).

After leaving Fjalladýrð, we spent the bulk of the next two days exploring the Eastern Fjords, working our way down to Höfn in the Southeast. Höfn is famous in Iceland for it’s Langoustines (Norway Lobsters), so when we were looking for dinner, we found that most every place in town had fresh langoustines, grilled with butter, parsley and garlic. After looking around and sizing up some of the options, we decided to go to one of the best-regarded places, Humarhöfnin. Humarhöfnin has a nice location in downtown Höfn, a block off of the harbor in an older building that apparently used to be a consumer cooperative/department store. It’s a nice restaurant space with a pleasant vintage interior (including a rather cool Art-Deco inspired staircase that’s obviously been there since the 1920s or so), with large upstairs and downstairs dining rooms. Despite not having reservations and the place being busy, they were able to seat us right away downstairs (thankfully, as we watched an entire busload of tourists—the same tourbus we encountered back in Myvatn, actually—go upstairs), and relax with a beer (Borg Bjartur Blond Bjór Nr. 4, a Dortmunder-style Blond beer from Ölgerðin Egill Skallagrímsson) as we looked over the menu.

After two days spent around Husavik and the Myvatn area, we decided to check out the northern part of Vatnajökull National Park, Jökulsárgljúfur canyon. This is a stunning beautiful area, and we ended up seeing some excellent basalt formations, some raging rivers, and several waterfalls before hitting the real showpiece, Dettifoss falls. It was a full day of driving, exploring, and hiking. After Dettifoss, however, we need to get to Egilsstaðir by dinner. But having spent most of the day hiking, we were more than a little hungry, so shortly after getting back to Iceland’s Ring Road, we decided to take a ~15 mile detour to Möðrudalur for a snack…

After our most succesful trip to Husavik for whale watching, we headed back down to the Myvatn area. It started to rain pretty heavily, but we still had a nice hike through Dimmuborgir. After seeing many cool lava formations, and be regaled with the stories of the Yule Lads. After some reading up on it from the various signs at Dimmuborgir, I learned that the Yule Lads are the result of a head-on collision between old Norse and Christian traditions: the Yule Lads are the sons of the mountain trolls (Grýla). Unlike the Grýla themselves (who search out and scare naughty children), the Yule Lads only come at Christmastime, and are more mischievous than anything else: they have names like door-slammer (Hurðaskellir), bowl-licker (Askasleikir), sausage-swiper (Bjúgnakrækir), and meat-hook (Ketkrókur, he looks down chimneys and steals roasting meat with a long hook). The supposed way to get the Yule Lads to leave you alone is for your parents to give you lots of clothing at Christmas. I swear I’m not making this up, this is from the signs at Dimmuborgir! But after all that hiking, we were again a bit wet, a bit tired, and really wanted some dinner. While Vogafjós almost lured us in again, we decided to mix it up and try another of the area’s (very few) restaurants, Gamli Bærinn, a pub located next to the Hótel Reynihlíð.

First of all, sorry about the delays, but after a brief stay back in the US, work had me traveling off to Germany, where for most of the trip I was without my laptop. So I’m still playing the catch-up game. But the next stop on our trip through Iceland was a morning of whale watching up in Husavik, a small fishing town in Northern Iceland that since the 1990s has had a pretty significant whale-watching. Sure, I thought I’d been on some good whale watches before (in Southern California, and in New England), but Husavik blew both of them out of the water, since it’s one of the best places in the Atlantic to go whale watching (the bay outside Húsavík is a major feeding area in the northern Gulf Stream). The result was three hours of fairly active whale watching, with humpbacks coming right up to the boat, some white-nosed dolphins, and even a few bottled-nosed whales. See my picture here, it was even cooler than their tourism brochures. But after all that whale watching (which include some cinnamon buns and hot cocoa as snacks), we were rather hungry. Luckily, Gamli Baukur is right on the dock…

After a long and busy day in which we did the Myvatn Nature Baths, Krafla, and the particularly foul Hverir, it was time for dinner. On the way to and from our hotel, on the East side of Lake Myvatn, we saw a simple hand-drawn sign sitting on an old wrapped hay bale saying “Vogafjós Cowshed Cafe”. Many people might pass this by. In fact, in many locales I’d say the majority of people would pass it by. We didn’t, however, for several reasons. First, the greater Myvatn/Reykjahlíð area isn’t exactly teeming with restaurants; indeed, Vogafjós is one of about three places to eat in that general vicinity (and I ate at one of the other places the next night. Second, several online sources had mentioned Vogafjós as a neat place to check out. And finally, this is exactly the sort of quirky place I like to look for…

As I mentioned before in my review for Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur… Iceland loves its hot dogs. Virtually every staffed gas station will make you a hot dog. The major towns all have several hot dog carts. And even minor tourist attractions 30km from the nearest paved road will often have hot dog carts. Well, on the fourth day of our driving trip, as we explored the Myvatn area, one place we checked out was the Krafla area, a series of geologically active ridges that include Leirhnjúkur (erupted in the early 1700s in what are known as the "Myvatn Fires") and Krafla (erupted last in 1984, now the site of a 60 MWe geothermal power station). Leirhnjúkur itself is a nice hike where you can see hot ground, steam vents, bubbling pools of mud, etc. It really is an incredible place to visit, with all sorts of neat sights, sounds, and smells, almost like visiting a prehistoric version of Earth. It’s also a place where you can get a hot dog…

After a second loooong day of driving (400+ km, or over 250 miles), we arrived in the late evening in Akureyri, Iceland’s second largest city, located on the west side of Eyjafjörður fjord on the north coast. We were hungry, and we ended up at Krua Siam. Something that surprised me with Iceland was that it has a substantial Thai population, and way more Thai restaurants than you’d think. But Iceland also has some very good lamb and beef, so we figured it would be nice to check out one of Iceland’s many Thai places when the opportunity presented itself. In Akureyri, we finally had a good opportunity, since Krua Siam was right by our hotel. Nestled into a wooden building right next to the central intersection in Akureyri, Krua Siam is obviously a popular spot; it was completely packec when we visited. And they’ve got a very complete Thai menu as well, with dishing ranging from soups and eggrolls, to classic cold Thai salads, to hot stir fried curry dishes, to noodle dishes. It didn’t take us long to come up with a reasonable set of selections: Tom Kha Kai (chicken coconut soup), followed by Yam Nua (spicy cold beef salad) and Pad Kva (spicy curry, which we opted to have made with lamb.)