Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
offered even at rural cafés. In some supermarkets,
hot thermoses of free coffee are laid on for
customers to help themselves, and wherever you
pay for a cup, the price usually includes a refill or
two.
Te a
is also pretty popular, though not
consumed with such enthusiasm.
Bottled water
and familiar brands of
soft drinks
are available
everywhere.
Milk
comes in a bewildering range of
styles, making a trip to the supermarket fridge quite
a challenge if you can't read Icelandic.
Mjolk
is
normal full-fat milk,
Lettmjolk
is skimmed,
AB Mjolk
is
plain runny yoghurt, and
G-Mjolk
is UHT milk.
specials
offered, or inexpensive fixed-price meals of
soup, bread and stew. All-you-can-eat
smorgas-
bords
or buffets also crop up, especially around
Christmas, when restaurants seem to compete with
each other over the calorie contents of their
spreads of cold meats and
cakes
.
In the country, pickings are far slimmer. Some
hotel restaurants
have fine food, though it's more
often filling than particularly memorable; prices
can be as high as in any restaurant, but are
generally lower. Otherwise, the only place offering
cooked food might be the nearest
fuel station
roadhouse
, which will whip up fast fodder such as
pylsur
(hot dogs), burgers, grills, sandwiches and
pizzas
- virtually Iceland's national dish - for a few
hundred krónur.
Found all over the country,
bars
, besides being
somewhere to have a drink, also usually sell meals
and are frequently decorated along particular
themes - decked out 1950s-style, for example, or
hung with fishing memorabilia.
Cafés
are increas-
ingly common in even small villages, offering light
meals, coffee and cakes.
Alcohol
Alcohol
is expensive - bring a bottle of duty-free
in with you to save costs - and, with the exception
of beer, only sold in bars, clubs, restaurants and
state-owned liquor stores known as
vinbúð
. These
are often tucked out of sight in distant corners of
towns and cities, and always have ludicrously
restricted opening hours - sometimes just an
hour, five days a week. Most Icelanders drink
very hard when they put their minds to it, most
often at parties or on camping trips - the August
bank holiday weekend is notorious. It's surprising,
then, to find that full-strength
beer
was actually
illegal until March 1989, when the 75-year-old
prohibition laws were revoked. In Reykjavík,
March 1 is still celebrated as
Bjórdagurinn
, or
Beer Day, with predictably riotous celebrations
organized at bars throughout the capital. Beer is
available in many supermarkets, and comes as
relatively inexpensive, low-alcohol pilsner, and
more expensive, stronger lagers.
All wine and most spirits are imported, though
hard-liquor enthusiasts should try
brennivín
, a
local spirit distilled from potatoes and flavoured
with caraway seeds. It's powerful stuff, affection-
ately known as
svarti dauði
or “black death”, and
certainly warms you up in winter - you'll also
welcome its traditional use to clean the palate after
eating fermented shark.
Self-catering
Self-catering
will save a lot over eating out,
though ingredients still cost more than they do at
home - again, you might want to bring some
supplies (especially camping rations) with you to
save money. There are very few specialist food
shops besides bakeries, but at least one
super-
market
in all villages, towns and cities. Don't
expect to find them attached to campsites,
however, and when travelling about, buy supplies
when you can: don't get caught short by weekend
shop hours, and know where the next supermarket
is (they are listed throughout the guide). There are
no shops in the Interior.
Larger supermarkets are well stocked with all
manner of groceries, plus fresh fruit, vegetables, fish
and meat. Supermarkets also sell single-use
barbeque packs (with aluminium tray, charcoal and
firelighter) if you fancy eating alfresco. Iceland
grows its own capsicums, mushrooms, tomatoes
and cucumbers, but most other things are
imported and therefore fairly expensive. Bónus and
Krónan are the cheapest supermarket chains.
Rural stores - often incorporated into the local
roadhouse - sell essential groceries and hardware,
snacks, hot drinks and fast food; there's often a
microwave for you to heat up pre-cooked meals. At
worst, they'll be nothing more than a shelf or two
of canned and dried food.
Restaurants, cafés and bars
Just about every settlement in Iceland has a
restau-
rant
of some sort. In Reykjavík, and to a lesser
extent Akureyri and the larger towns, you can get
everything from traditional Icelandic fare to
Mexican, Thai, Chinese, and Italian- and French-
inspired dishes, and there are even a couple of
vegetarian places. This is the most expensive way to
dine - expect to pay upwards of 2500kr for a main
dish - though keep your eyes peeled for lunchtime
