Icelandic Adventure

Recently Allison and I went on a pretty epic Icelandic adventure with a couple of friends of ours. Unlike many of the adventures I write about on this site, the focus of this trip had nothing to do with food. The focus was instead exploring the natural beauty of this awesome country. What this basically means is that all of the food we tasted on this trip was focused on road tripping around the amazing island, and not about stopping at every restaurant or candy store.

In fact, stopping at restaurants wasn't that important to us at all, since we were all riding in a camper. Most of our meals were being cooked on a tiny range inside our camper. The meal of choice for this adventure for me and Allison were hamburgers. It's because the local grocery store (called bonus) sold pre-made hamburgers in packages of two. As a side note, Bonus has one of the greatest grocery store logos/mascots ever (pictured above). One thing that was available at Bonus, as well as other grocery stores was a huge selection of pre-made salads and dips. Often a meal for me was a hamburger with a side of one or two salads, and the burger would be covered in some kind of flavoured cream cheese or spread.

Mornings for me consisted of skyr, which is kind of like yogurt. I'm not sure where skyr was invented (maybe Iceland) but it was so abundant on this trip. Most grocery stores had several brands of skyr to choose from, but only a few varieties of yogurt. 

Coffee was also an important part of this trip, for everyone except me because I don't drink coffee. We were traveling with two friends from Finland, so I'm not sure if the excessive amount of coffee came from them, or if Iceland is also really coffee crazy too. It could also be the fact that we were driving a lot, and some nights sleeping very little, so coffee was just important.

While we stopped at many amazing sites, we also stopped at many truck stops as well. The selection of snacks at the truck stops was superb. Always a good collection of chocolate and wafer themed bars, and always an exceptional collection of licorice and gummy treats. Each truck stop had at least one giant wall filled with a huge selection of sweet treats.

Truck stops often had bakeries in them as well, and cinnamon buns seemed to be the treat of choice. Some bakeries/truck stops had more than one variety of cinnamon bun to choose from.

The one thing I found challenging on this trip, snack wise, was trying to find treats that were exclusively Icelandic. While in Reykjavík and even at some truck stops there were advertised Icelandic chocolate bars available, candy wise it was hard to figure out which treats were brought in from other countries and which were local. There seems to be quite an affinity for Northern European treats, in particular treats from Sweden and Denmark.

We finished our trip in the capital Reykjavík, and the food choices seemed very plentiful. We ate some excellent local dishes, and even tried some great Indian food. Outside of the cities it seems like Iceland is really a great place to eat simply as you explore the beautiful countryside. Inside the cities it feels very European, with options from many parts of the world, but also some traditional local foods that are very comfortable for most western pallets.

Did I mention, I also tasted some glacier water from a newly broken iceberg. It was really tasty, but also just a little bit salty.