Reykjavik is a rather unusual city at first. Gloomy weather, wind, chilly, grey facades…
When you get to the city centre, the picture changes a bit.
It is quite colourful, with lots of similar facades, low houses, but also in different colours.
In my personal experience, people are quite polite and courteous. Almost everyone who meets you asks “How are you?” Just like in a shop or café, when leaving, most people wish you “Have a nice day.”
The city is full of tourists in the summer, it is alive and breathing with all its might, and the temperature rarely reaches 20 degrees Celsius.
The streets are rarely neat and clean, and you cannot smoke a cigarette in any café interior, which speaks volumes about the level of awareness and culture of the nation.
The day in June lasts the longest, from around 2.30am until after midnight, and the night is not dark but rather feels more like a light twilight. So it’s not easy to sleep in such conditions. But in winter it’s a different story, when during the winter solstice in December, the night that is dark, falls around 3:30 pm, and the days start around 11 am.
When we talk about food, it’s not too unusual because people eat a lot of fish, lamb, seafood, potatoes, vegetables, rich lamb and vegetable soups, seafood soups… But what bothers me personally is that a lot of dishes have a touch of sweetness. For example, pickled vegetables are sweetened quite heavily, I think the reason for this is not that sugar plays the role of a preservative, but that Icelanders simply like such quite sweet food. There are quite a few restaurants around the city that serve Icelandic food with a mix of fusion.
I was quite impressed that restaurant kitchens, to a fairly large extent, use fresh herbs such as parsley, mint, thyme, rosemary and coriander, which are not often available in Croatia and have a very mild taste. Then I always remember my friend who was in Thailand a few times, last year with me, where they also use it often. He can’t stand coriander.
I’m also fascinated by the amount of calm and relaxedness in the kitchens. I’m not saying that you should be slow, because the kitchen is always in a hurry and energetic during service. But the kindness of my colleagues and the relative calmness of the chefs, for me, seems surprisingly different from my previous experience in Europe and Croatia.
The first few days I ate in one of the best restaurants and there I was extremely impressed by a course that included white cabbage – practically burnt on the grill until black on the inside, served with cabbage juice and toasted ground hazelnuts.
The amount of saltiness was on the borderline, but it matched and balanced the ingredients and flavors so well that it produced a strong umami in my mouth. The thing when every bite calls for more… 🙂
