It hasn’t snowed in Reykjavik in four months, but hours after I arrive it starts to pelt down big, fluffy flakes of the stuff.
It’s a fitting backdrop for the first day of Food & Fun, a festival in its 23rd year that invites chefs from across the world to cook in some of the Icelandic capital’s finest restaurants. They bring their skill and technique, and Iceland supplies the ingredients from its surprisingly epic stash. Despite what you might have heard, it’s not all fermented shark and puffin burgers around here. In fact, we don’t see either during our four-day visit; instead, we get stuck into the island’s bounty alongside the festival’s chefs, who are also here to experience Iceland’s fascinating food culture.
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It might be isolated, and really bloody cold at times, but Iceland’s elite supply of geothermal energy means farmers can pretty much grow whatever they want in huge, sustainable greenhouses. There are thriving banana, tomato, strawberry and cucumber farms, as well as premium lamb from purebred stock that can be traced back to Viking times.
I join the 40-or-so chefs on a visit to one of these farms at Friðheimar, where juicy tomatoes are grown year-round. Friðheimar is, oddly, one of Iceland’s biggest tourist attractions, a farm-to-table dining experience that’s like a high-end version of visiting the garden centre cafe with your nan. On a Thursday lunchtime, it’s absolutely rammed and we all get stuck into some seriously great tomato soup, which far beats ultra-processed tins of the stuff.
At a remote, family-run lamb farm about an-hour-and-a-half drive from Reykjavik, not only do I get to meet some of the lambs – all of which the farmer knows by name – I also get to see a nearby rock where some elves live (most Icelanders believe in ancient folklore of the ‘huldufólk’, but that is perhaps another story for another time).
Then, I taste one of Iceland’s national dishes – no, not fermented shark – but lamb soup (or kjötsúpa). I’d actually say it was more of a stew than a soup, but either way, it’s an ultra cosy and deeply flavourful broth swimming with hunks of local lamb, root vegetables and greens, as well as some barley for good measure. Now I know why everyone here is so proud of the lamb. It’s far more delicate than its New Zealand counterpart, and much, less, well, farmy tasting, due to the fact that wild vegetation and bilberries are part of their diet.
What else can Iceland do that the rest of the world can’t? Well, Iceland can bake bread in a geysir. Or, at the very least, extremely close to a geysir. Another day trip with the chefs sees us driving the stunning Golden Circle route and visiting the Geysir geothermal area in the Haukadalur Valley. Here, the hot springs are a little too hot to take a dip in, but are perfect for cooking dough (wrapped in tinfoil and a milk carton) for 24 hours, then eating the sweet, almost-fruit-cake-like rye bread hot and fresh from the ground, topped with pickled herring, boiled egg and cream cheese. If you can deal with the marauding smell of sulphur, it’s a delight.
‘What else can Iceland do that the rest of the world can’t? It can bake bread in a geysir’
Another school-trip style outing sees us all heading to Bessastaðir, the official residence of the Icelandic President, Halla Tómasdóttir. We’re not just there to have a look at the building, we’re there to meet Halla herself, who shakes the hand of every single chef, before plying us with fizz and lumpfish canapes. If you needed further proof of how welcoming Iceland is, it’s me nattering to the First Gentleman while standing next to smiling pictures of Xi Jinping and King Charles.
My visit also takes me to the stunning and relatively recently opened Sky Lagoon, a kind of folk horror spa, with a warm, rock-laden infinity pool and a sauna that looks out over a harbour in which I experienced a small ego death. Oh, and there’s a bar, so you can bob about drinking a beer or crawberry martini after you’ve cold plunged and sloughed off several layers of skin with a salt scrub.
But back to Food & Fun. It’s a simple set-up: chefs each take over a restaurant and offer a set menu, all of them the same price, at 14,900kr (roughly £88) per person. We’re lucky enough to sample four.
Mark Edwards of London’s Nobu takes advantage of Iceland’s supply of sustainable fish, and his dinner at the chic Fiskmarkaðurinn features Arctic char sashimi in yuzu dressing and yellowtail with soy, as well as a grilled ribeye that comes with a salsa featuring Icelandic-grown wasabi.
Luigi Pomata, who runs a self-titled restaurant in Cagliari, Sardinia, pops up in the sprawling La Primavera on the top floor of the magnificent Harpa concert hall, whipping up one of the best dishes we try all week: a simple fregola pasta with seafood carbonara sauce.
At modern Nordic bistro Kastrup, Sylvia Vavik Flåten shows off her Mexican-Norwegian fusion style with a series of tantalising tacos, and in the Michelin-starred Tides, with its incredible harbour views, South American chef Diego Muñoz brings forth Peruvian plates utilising Icelandic duck. Fermented shark? Not likely.
Leonie Cooper was a guest of Food & Fun Festival and Visit Iceland. Our reviews and recommendations have been editorially independent since 1968. For more, see our editorial guidelines.
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