Boston Restaurant and Food Blog » Iceland

How do Icelanders feel about their government?

Lingbo Li — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 23:24:47 +0000

The Icelandic government dissolves on Monday, our last night in Reykjavik. On Friday, we saw a small band of ardent protestors outside of the Alþingi, their parliament. Apparently they’ve started demonstrating daily since its come back in session. On Saturday, the square was a madhouse of angry citizens bearing signs proclaiming “New Republic” and chanting, or at least what it sounds like to foreign ears, “No my stinky toe!” (Some Iocals translated it as, “The government is ineffectual.”)

protests

Elections have been called for May, so what they are protesting for exactly, I’m not sure, nor were some other locals.

Could the government really have done anything to avoid the crash? I ask my Swedish riding instructor, who’s been living in Iceland for a few years.

Icelandic horses are small, stout creatures, having survived for centuries eating nothing more than the tough grass, one of the few things that will grow here. (An Icelandic cookbook prints a recipe for “moss soup,” made out of moss, sugar, and milk.)

Maybe not, she explained, it was more that they didn’t accept responsibility for the crash. It’s that they haven’t been assuring the people they’ll take care of it.

A lot of people have lost their savings, and with the tumbling currency, it’s much harder to go abroad.

On the car ride back to Reykjavik, my driver said that crime rates have been rising – it used to be that people would leave cars unlocked and keys in the ignition, but now, “People are getting desperate,” she said.

The unemployment rate, by US standards, has gone from nearly nonexistent to excellent – it’s currently around 3-4%.

Friday night, Marco and I met a member of the Icelandic symphony at a swanky hotel bar.

The bar/lounge at 101 Hotel

“This is very before the crash,” he said, gesturing to the sleek, opulent lounge. Mojitos cost 1450 ISK, about 12 USD now, but about 20 in better days.

And you can only imagine how incestuous the dating pool here with only 300,000 people – at best, a small US city. “All my exes have dated my exes,” lamented the symphony player, who suffered an even smaller selection by being gay.

But it must not be so bad if your limited dating pool consists of such attractive people. Last night at Vegamot, whose thumping bass and shouts can be heard across the street from our hotel, the floor was packed with Iceland’s most beautiful. Every woman was blonde and stunning and every man was smartly dressed in a kind of metro-lite – skinny collared shirts, one fingerless glove, sculpted locks. One club even had hair straighteners in the bathroom.

After a night out, a stop at Bjaerin’s Bestu (City’s Best) is a must. Marco and I went three nights in a row. There, we ran into some other rowdy hot-dog lovers who I immediately quizzed on the economy. “Do you think it’s the government’s fault or just something out of their control?” I asked one guy in a green knit hat.

He shrugged. “A little bit of both. I actually don’t really care,” he said. He was a university student. Marco and I bought our hot dogs with everything and frantically consumed them like they were about to be snatched from us. They put some kind of crunchy fried onion on them that is absolutely heavenly.

I told somebody we went to Harvard. “Really?” he said, as if I had told joke an outrageous joke. “Do you really?” I nodded. “Is it hard?”

But the “crash” might be a misleading term in some ways. Marco and I meet an expat Spanish teacher named Elias in a coffee shop. He had chin length brown hair, tucked behind his ears, and a boyish enthusiasm barely contained by his lanky body.

Elias

He, along with my horseback riding instructor, both mention the same thing – that since many Icelanders opted to stay home rather than go abroad for the holiday season, the country benefited from its home-grown consumerism. He says shops and stores are still full of locals, which Marco and I have noticed as well.

“So there is no crisis,” he says, laughing, half-joking. “Sorry.”

Icelandic Cuisine, Or How Lingbo Ate Rotten Shark, Rare Whale, and Smoked Puffin

Lingbo Li — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:36:49 +0000

Hákarl is fermented shark meat that’s served in small cubes. It sounded absolutely disgusting, so I knew I had to try it.

toast, rotten shark, herring 3 ways

I found a seafood place that was supposed to serve this local specialty. It was featured in an appetizer along with pickled herring. Neither sounded appetizing, but I went ahead and ordered anyway.

It looked innocent enough – pale, pink, a bit of a rubbery texture, but put it in your mouth and the taste is pure ammonia – like chewing gum made of industrial cleaning fluids. You’re supposed to chase it with Schnapps. I was given a shot of the local speciality, Brennivín, nicknamed “Black Death.”

Also on my plate was pickled herring 3 ways, with no way managing to overcome its offensive heritage.

I ate a lot of the bread that night. The smjör (butter) was good. I enviously glared at my friend’s meal of cod and langoustine (lobster) in a cream sauce.

So far, Iceland: 1. Lingbo: 0.

I wasn’t about to give up yet. Next on my hit list was a cuddly, peaceful mammal.

“Where can I get good whale?” I asked one local.

“Þrir Frakkar,” he replied immediately. The name means Three Frenchmen.

He went into the tricky particulars of preparing whale.”The thing about whale is that you have to cook it right. You can only cook it for 40 seconds on each side or else it tastes like cod liver oil. They have puffin, too.”

Sold! I asked the hotel owner where it was, and he drew it up on a map – just a short walk away, but then again, everything was a short walk away from our very centrally located hotel room.

When 7pm rolled around, Marco and I were seated with menus listing delicacies like smoked puffin and hashed fish on Icelandic black bread. He got salted cod on a bed of apples and raisins.

a puffin appetizer

First was a smoked puffin appetizer. It came in maroon strips with blobs of yellow mustard, whose tangy sweetness provided a nice counterpart to the gamey, smokey taste of puffin. It was particularly delicious atop bread with a dollop of mustard.

whale steak

Then the main event. Mine was served with with a pepper cream sauce. I gingerly lifted a steak with my fork and noted the purplish blood that was mingling with the sauce.

I bit into my first piece, expecting the exotic, and ended up with a mouthful of familiar. If you like steak, you’ll love whale. It’s darker, denser, and more intense than its bovine counterpart, but otherwise similar in flavor. However, it wasn’t entirely beef. There was a faint undercurrent of fishiness and that made you aware that you were still eating a very, very rare slab of a marine animal.

Food presentation was suspect, plated with an afterthought of pale potato spheres. One small spot in the steak was overdone. The local was right: a mouthful of cod liver oil.

The thing is, I don’t really like steak, even the normal kind that comes from cows. I struggled to finish one of my two steaks, and again looked lustfully after Marco’s meal. I had the waitress pack up the leftover whale steak.

We did crappy Thai food the next night.

I finished my food.

Tired of meal failures and semi-failures, I decided on Saegreifinn (The Sea Baron) for our last dinner. They were known for their cheap, tasty lobster soup, something which I figured would be as comforting and familiar as Kraft Easy Mac after rotten shark and rare whale.

We walked in and saw an few shelves of raw kebobs. Cod kebobs, whale kebobs, salmon kebobs, potato kebobs. Other than the potato, the whale was the cheapest option.

the menu at the sea baron

I spotted no menu, so I asked the cashier for one. She pointed to the platters of kebobs. That was the menu.

Our food came in styrofoam cups and trays, and there was no ambient noise other than the erratic rumbling of the refrigerator. We sat on nautically-themed stools at long tables too close together. The decor was somewhere between nautical and a disaster. And the lobster soup was delicious.

lobster soup

It wasn’t like a thick, creamy New England style lobster bisque. It was thinner, fragrant, and my spoon fished out tender chunks of langoustine. We dunked in buttered slices of bread and soaked up every last, savory drop. I also found a lone, confetti-sized square of red pepper and a few straggly bits of celery. Some talkative Hong Kong tourists and French tourists came in, and Marco was aghast that both our secret languages were rendered unsecret.

cod kebob

By the time I got my cod, I was already full. It was fresh and perfectly cooked, but bland, and I struggled to find the perfect condiments for it. “What’s that?” one of the Hong Kong tourists asked, pointing to the sweet mustard. “What about that?” he asked again, pointing to the very dilute, Icelandic brand soy sauce in a squeeze bottle. And then, “Where are you from?”

Nearing the end of my trip, I took a dip in the geothermal, silica-filled waters of the Blue Lagoon. Afterwards, I felt a bit peckish. The cafe offered skyr, the equivalent of yogurt here. It was super thick and creamy, with a smoother texture than yogurt, despite the fact it had a very low fat content. I wished they offered it in the US.

the city's best

But by far, one of our favorite meals on the trip was so good that we ate it with great gusto – three days in a row. It was the fabled Icelandic hot dog from Baejarins Beztu with all the condiments, including incredible fried onion bits and a sweet mustard.

“Why does this taste so good?” I cried in pylsur-related joy after taking a bite.

“It’s because it’s a combination of meats,” said the local who had treated us. “Lamb, cow, pig, and uh, some horse.”

On the last morning, I retrieved the whale from the fridge for a quick breakfast. It turned out that the restaurant had repackaged the steak with more potatoes and a side of pepper cream sauce. How thoughtful!

After a quick go in the microwave, it tasted as good as new.

The Nastiest Day Imaginable + Some Iceland Pix

Lingbo Li — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:13:15 +0000

… and it’s the first day of class!

The weather had a brilliant idea of snowing, then raining, creating 3 inch deep puddles of brown semi-solid wastewater on every sidewalk. And I ran through it in 4 inch heels. It’s a miracle I haven’t died today.

I thought this was a nice touch to my Social Anthropology sophomore tutorial syllabus:

Please note: We will not give extensions or incompletes in this course unless you have Documented Dire Circumstances (DDC). DDC does not include writer’s block, spring fever, falling madly in love or fatigue. (bolding mine)

Chillaxin' in the Blue Lagoon

The Blue Lagoon

The view from the plane

Check and check.

Restless in Reykjavik

Lingbo Li — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:50:06 +0000

A protest sign left outside of the Alþingi, the Icelandic parliament. It reads "NEW REPUBLIC."

Reykjavik, Iceland

Lingbo Li — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:29:38 +0000

A gorgeous, glacier-filled harbor

So I arrived in Iceland not so many hours ago with Marco – daylight lasts from around 10am to 5:30pm or so. The city is adorably quaint and small, and even the parliament smacks of the kind of small, squat dollhouse feel (with angry protestors outside, however).

Babies in strollers were also given small pots and pans to express their displeasure towards the Icelandic government.

It was odd that all the churches we walked into were wide open and unstaffed, plus almost always empty.

Anyway, looking a lovely meal of whale meat/puffin/rotten shark. Will report back soon.

Protestors in front of the parliament banging pots/pans/drums since the economy is in the shitter and all.

hallgrimskirkja - the outside currently under construction.

Some kind of battleship?!

A lesbian monstertruck. Clearly.

The only viking we saw.