The concept of MAR Restaurant is to infuse cucines from France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Brasil and Chile with fresh Icelandic ingredients. Their menu is split between launch, day and dinner menu and offeres variety of seafood, meats, vegetarian and of course deserts.

Now lets get down to business and check out what they offered us. First up was a sample course of fish croquettes served with tomato jam, dill and anise, where the sweetness of the jam and the fish worked really well together, a simple yet very tasty sampler.

Our first starter was plaice ceviche with oranges, popcorn, red onions and peppers. This dish was really fresh with a little bit of sweetness from the oranges and worked perfectly with the plaice, how ever the popcorn did not do anything for the taste of the corse it was more of a fun visual twist of the original course.

Second starter was a lovely wild mushrooms risotto with pan fried lobster, where the risotto was just spot on cooked with rich flavor of wild mushrooms and very tasty, how ever the lobster was a little less exciting and lacking in flavor and in our opinion could have done with a little less time on the pan.

Last starter we tried out was the seafood soup with mixed seafood. The soup it self was really good, with hint of lobster and perfectly salted, however it seems that the seafood as scallops and lobster had a little too much time to cook in the soup and was getting a little bit too cooked.

For the first main course, we were served was parma wrapped monkfish fennel salad, sweetcorn and pepper sauce, a well presented course, where the fennel salad owned the dish and took us by surprise but otherwise a little dull in our opinion where we’ve seen the wrapping of fish in bacon or parma a thousand times.

Now for the best dish of them all, the salted cod or Bacalao with zuccihini, rocket salad and plums. A spot on dish where the sweetness of the plum sauce worked brilliantly with the saltiness of the cod. The dish was well presented and had a nice contrast, both in colors as well as in taste.

Last main course was a slow cooked rib – eye steak with cabbage, mushrooms and red pepper sauce which turned out to be our least favorite dish of them all, the meat was slow cooked for 6 hours and it turns out that it was just plainly over cooked and the dish it self was no eye-candy at all.

For deserts we got a platter of all courses of their deserts menu, coconut and rice pudding, creme catalana, sorbet and fruits and warm chocolate cake. Where the coconut and rice pudding was the most interesting one and gave your taste buds a ride for your money. Over all the deserts, no matter which one you’d choose wouldn’t disappoint!

For the dinner menu, starters range from 1.750 ISK / 14 USD to 2.500 ISK / 20 USD, main courses 3.850 ISK / 30 USD to 5.300 ISK 42 USD and deserts from 1.350 ISK / 11 USD to 1.690ISK / 13 USD which is pretty standart pricing in Iceland.

Our only real complaints are that we were a group of five that decided to take a surprise menu and each course was served on two plates to share between the table, first of all we were not told of this and expected to be served our own dishes, second both dishes had equal amount of food that made it a little hard to divide equally and last of all you should not have to ask for new plates each time a new course arrives, you really don’t want to mix ceviche with wild mushroom risotto!

As is with most new restaurants, there are always some quircks to work out but over all MAR is a restaurant worth visiting, with its lovely atmosphere and good food, even though we found some kinks with some of the courses.

Location

Recipe for four persons

• 800gr Salmon fillet (28oz)
• 1 Medium sized fresh ginger root
• 1 Red Chili pepper
• 2 Limes
• 1 Bottle thick Teriyaki saucer
• 4 Medium sized carrots
• 1 Yellow turnip
• 1 Fennel bulb

Finely chop the chili pepper, peel the zest from one lime and rub into the fillet, be careful not to peel into the white of the lime (mesocarp) it is terribly bitter. Finely grade roughly one tbsp fresh ginger over the fillet and cover with a generous amount of thick Teriyaki sauce.

Preferably store in a refrigerator for an hour or more to let the fillet absorb the marinade as best as possible.

Grade the carrots, yellow turnip and finely slice the fennel bulb and toss together. Squeeze juice from one lime and mix with one tbsp finely graded ginger and dress the root salad just before serving.

Heat the oven to 180 °C / 360 °F. Slice the salmon fillet into for even steaks and place on a non-stick oven tray. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes depending on the size of the steaks.

Recipe makes 40 cheese rolls

• 900gr white flour (2 pounds)
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 12gr Active dry yeast (0.4oz)
• 60gr Sugar (2oz)
• 500ml Whole Milk (17oz)
• 100gr Butter (3.5oz)
• 500gr Ham Spread cheese (17.5oz)
• 200gr Ham (7oz)
• 200gr Grated Cheese (7oz)
• 1 Egg

Heat the milk in a skillet and melt the butter in it, mix in the yeast but be careful that the milk mixture is not too hot, just about luke warm otherwise there is a chance you could kill the yeast.

Add the sugar and the salt to the mixture and mix well. Slowly add the flour and get whisk well to prevent lumps in the dough. Keep adding flour until the mix becomes more dough-like, then you can either get your hands dirty and add the rest of the flour by hand or you can use an electric mixer for the job as we did to mix in the rest of the flour.

Heat up your oven to the lowest setting, in our case that was 50°C / 120°F. Place your dough in a bowl and cover with a damp towel. Let your towel covered bowl sit in your oven for about 30 minutes to let the dough rise.

Divide the dough into five equal sized balls and roll them out into a thin pizza-like circles. Smear each one with spread cheese, top with grated cheese and ham. Cut into eight equal slices with a pizza cutter and roll each slice up, starting from the wide end towards the narrow one.

Heat your oven to 200°C / 390°F. Whisk one egg in a cup and brush each roll with it, bake for 12 – 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Recipe makes about 20 bruschettas

• 2 Medium sized chicken breasts
• 2 Fresh baguettes
• Mango Chutney
• Thick Teriyaki Sauce
• 1 Bell Pepper (Sweet pepper)
• Spinach

For this recipe we decided to go with chicken breasts, but you can also choose to use chicken tenderloin and cut them in half.

Start by slicing the chicken breasts into thin slices and place them in a bowl. Pour the teriyaki sauce over the sliced chicken breasts and mix well. Let the chicken breasts marinade in a refrigerator for at least an hour, the longer the better will the chicken absorb the teriyaki flavor.

Fry the chicken on medium to high heat in an non-stick pan for about 3 minutes on each side (or until cooked through, depending on thickness). Set a side and let cool.

Cut the baguette into slices, preferably no thicker than 1.5 cm thick (roughly 1/2 inch). Smear each slice with about teaspoons worth of mango chutney, top with a leaf of spinach, place the teriyaki chicken on top and garnish with a little chopped bell pepper

Spaghetti Polpette was our first course to try out at this newly opened pizzeria you could tell that the meatballs were freshly made and every thing except the spaghetti was made from the ground up out of fresh ingredients, but we found it to lack a little bit in taste where it needed a little more kick and of course it wouldn’t spoil if the spaghetti would be fresh.

Then we move on to the pizzas where we need to say: “Hold the presses we believe we just found the best pizza in town!”. Their pride is the dough, which they treat with the utter most care and let it rise and develop to it fullest with their own blend of yeast and where it is treated like sour dough.

The thickness of the pizza bread was just perfect and baked in a wood oven that gave a great taste to it. Pizza makers often fall into a pit of putting too much sauce on their pizza but we can assure you this is not the case with La Luna pizzas where the sauce just complements the toppings.

Their cheesy garlic bread is great where the balance of garlic cheese and saltines is just the way we like it and we would recommend it as a side dish with either a pizza or one of their pasta dishes.

La Luna has 35 different pizzas on their menu and each comes two sizes 12″ and 16″ and range from 1.590 ISK / 12 USD – 2.590 ISK / 20 for the 12″ and 1.990 ISK / 15.50 USD – 3.190 ISK / 25 USD for the 16″.

Location

VOX Restaurant is a New Nordic Cuisine restaurant and pride themselves of using domestic and organic ingredients where available and the chefs themselves even go out hunting for wild mushrooms, berries and every thing Icelandic nature has to offer and thus the kitchen is highly depended on which season you visit VOX and really is a defining factor for the restaurant in whole.

We had the pleasure of having the fall seasonal menu with a few extra dishes picked for us by the chef to sample. The seasonal menu consists of domestic key ingredients and that goes for both dark meat and seafood as well as berries and mushrooms.

Our starter was an amazing creamy shellfish soup with cauliflower, almonds, scallops and lobster which got our taste buds dancing, the soup itself was light enough to let all the ingredients shine on their own but enough flavor so it wouldn’t seem dull, just a perfect course to start with an topped of by being served with Marguet Blanc de Noir Ambonnay.

For our second starter there was Pine cured char with horseradish, char roe and home-made remolade, where the pine and roe gave an interesting flavor to the char and the remolade gave a hint of freshness which we honestly did not expect from remolade. Interesting but not an exceptional dish but we knew that it would be hard to follow up after such a great first starter. This course was complemented with Peter Lehmann Dry Riesling.

Now for the third starter we had smoked puffin, new potatoes, walnuts, browned butter, and grill dressing. The smoked puffin was very good where the smoking was just right, not too much nor too little just a perfect balance and the new potatoes can not go wrong, but what threw us a little off was the grill sauce, which was oil based and a little too much was used for our taste where it of overwhelmed the whole dish.

Our fourth and last starter was a pan fried wild duck breast, celeriac, wild mushrooms, juniper berries and beer gravy, if you didn’t know, a wild duck makes all the difference and tastes totally different from your average farm duck. The meat was packed with flavor and tender, accompanied with delicious wild mushrooms and interesting beer gravy made from beer and hops. Both the puffin and the duck were served with Fischer Gradenthal Premium 2007.

Our first main course was an interesting and really well presented dish of a pan fried plaice, sun chokes, Faroese scallops and baked garlic. The plaice is not a really common fish to eat in Iceland which makes it even more interesting, and the taste did not disappoint either as it was very rich in flavor and proved to us that the plaice deserves to be on the menu more often. The plaice was served to us with Trapiche Chardonnay.

The second main course was a fried wild reindeer with wild mushrooms, beet root, cabbage, smoked marrow and the heart of the reindeer. The reindeer was as you would expect from a wild reindeer, tender and packed with flavor. Now the last ingredient mentioned, namely the heart might set someone off, but surprisingly enough it was really delicious and all this served with Tenuta Moraia Bolgheri Pietracupra 2009.

And to finish of our dining experience at Vox Restaurant we were served white chocolate mousse, frozen and fresh Icelandic wild berries, Crow berries juice and hazel nuts. This was a really nice balance of sweetness since often deserts tend to be overly sweet but this one was just right spot on. To top it of it was served with a glass of Sandeman 20 year Old Tawny port.

All these courses were served to us skillfully by our waiter that carefully chose the wine with each course and lead us through each and every ingredient in each course. Bottom line impeccable service!

The seasonal menu consists of four of these seven courses, the shellfish soup, puffin, reindeer and the desert and can be ordered with or without wine, for 16.400 ISK / 133 USD with and 8.900 ISK / 72 USD without. The wines chosen complemented each course really well so if you are a wine and dine fan you should not be disappointed.

Follow TheFoodPerv.com

Location

Recipe makes 12 – 20 cupcakes depending on cup sizes

Batter

• 235gr Flour (8.3oz)
• 125gr Butter (4.4oz)
• 250gr Sugar (8.8oz)
• 180ml Milk (6oz)
• 2 tsp Baking powder
• 100gr Chocolate (3.5oz)
• Pinch of Salt
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 2 Eggs

Frosting

• 250gr Butter (8.8oz)
• 200gr Castor Sugar (7oz)
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 1 Egg yolk
• 1/4 Lemon
• 1/3 Lime
• Yellow food color
• Green food color

Pre-heat the oven to 175°C / 350°F. Dice the butter and add to mixer with the sugar and vanilla extract, mix four about 2 – 3 minutes at medium speed. Add one egg at a time and mix well between.

Weigh the flour and add baking powder to it. Add slowly to the mixer while it is running and mix for about 2 minutes. Pour the milk into the mixer slowly and mix until the texture of the batter is even and smooth.

Chop the chocolate into chunks depending on your desire of chunkyness and add to the mixer, mix at low speed.

Place the batter in cupcake cups and bake at 175°C / 350°F for about 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown, set a side and let cool.

For the frosting let the butter sit out of the fridge for half an hour, dice it and add to the mixer with the castor sugar and vanilla extract, mix at medium speed until sugar and butter have been combined.

Add one egg yolk to the mixer and mix at high speed for a minute or two. Divide the frosting in half, add yellow food color and juice from a fresh lemon into one half and green food color and fresh lime juice to the other.

A quarter of lemon and a third of lime are just approximations, add a little juice at a time, mix well and use your tastebudds, the frosting should have rich lemon and lime flavor.

Be sure the cupcakes have cooled before topping them with frosting or it will be quite messy.

Follow TheFoodPerv.com

When we arrived at Osushi around 8 pm on a week night we realized that this is quite the popular place. We were greeted by a really pleasant receptionist that offered us to take a seat at the waiting area while we waited for seats at the sushi train and were told that it would take up to 15 minutes before seats would be available and that we did. After about 10 minutes waiting we were told that our seats were ready.

After sitting at the sushi train for a few minutes, observing the dishes that rolled by us, we realized that they don’t just serve ordinary sushi as they try to suit every one with courses from sashimi, maki and nigiri to chicken spears and beef tenderloin so we had to try a little of every direction.

First dish we chose was a maki roll topped with some sauce, wich turned out to be a fried chicken maki roll with avocado, wasabi, topped with chilli mayo, which is not your typical sushi but turned out to be excellent, a little crunchy on the inside and the dressing and the wasabi gave it a good kick.

Next up was a teriyaki chicken fillet spear topped with sesame seeds. This was an utter disappointment, where the chicken might as well have been cooked the day before or even the day before that since it had all the characteristics of that, being like rubber to chew through.

Now it was time to try out some of the more ordinary sushi, where we started with the salmon sashimi with light pickled cucumbers and lime. The salmon was really good and worked well with the lime and the cucumbers. We followed this with a tuna tartar with chili, sesame seeds, spring onion, coriander and lime which was even better than the salmon.

The maki rolls we tried out were salmon with avocado, cream cheese and dill and on the other hand a crab roll with avocado and topped with salmon, lobster and tuna. The first could have done with a little less of the cream cheese since it felt like eating a roll filled with butter but the crab roll was excellent.

The lightly grilled  beef tenderloin with teriyaki, sesame seeds and rucola was just perfect, dressed with just enough teriyaki and beef just works so well with rucola, just a really simple and good course.

Osushi, the train is a fun place to visit with your friends, where you just sit down and watch your sushi dishes pass you by until you snatch one that you really like, and you are very likely to snatch a few more. The dishes are all color coded and each color represents the price of the dish ranging from 220 ISK / 1,80 USD to 440 ISK / 3,60 USD.

The thought could not escape us after having that chicken spear that we did not have any clue to how long the dishes had been circling the train. Every one likes their sushi fresh and this could be easily fixed by adding a label displaying the time the dish was added to the train on the lid of each dish, that way people could be sure they are getting properly fresh sushi.

Follow TheFoodPerv.com

Location

Recipe for 3 – 4 persons

• 900gr Salted Cod fillet (2 pounds)
• 1 Can Diced tomatoes
• 1 Can Tomato paste
• 200gr Dates (1/2 pound)
• Handful Mint leaves
• 4 Large Potatoes
• Few pinches Saltverk gourmet salt
• Dash olive oil
• 1 Clove garlic
• 50gr Butter (2 oz)

Heat the oven to 160 °C / 320 °F, and bake the potatoes for about 30 – 40 minutes, depending on size. Do not fully cook them since it will be more difficult slicing them later on.

Add the can of diced tomatoes, tomato paste, dates, the clove of garlic and a handful mint leaves to a blender. Blend until the mixture becomes smooth. Add the purré to a skillet and shimmer on low heat for 15 – minutes.

Slice the roughly half-baked potato’s into about 2 cm thick slices. Sprinkle a little olive oil over an oven tray and add a few pinches salt. Lay the potato slices on the oven tray and sprinkle a little olive oil and a few pinches salt over them. Heat the oven to 180 °C / 360 °F and bake for 10 – 15 minutes or until the become a little crisp on the top.

Slice the cod fillet into steaks, heat a frying pan to high heat, add butter. Fry the cod steaks, skin down for about 80 – 90% of the cooking time, 3 – 7 minutes depending on the thickness of the fillet, making the skin crisp.

Place potatoes on a plate, place the cod fillets on top of the potatoes and spread the dates-tomato pureé over the cods skin and add a little on the side, top the cod with a few leaves of mint.

Follow TheFoodPerv.com

We were looking forward to dine there because we love to try something new and also there is a lack of decent steakhouses in Reykjavík so a new steak house is a welcome addition to the restaurant scene in Reykjavík.

When we arrived we were welcomed by one of the owners, who was going to serve our table that evening, he told us about the restaurant and their pride in the kitchen, namely their charcoal oven where they cook their steaks. They have also adopted to technology where their Vine and drinks menu is presented digitally on an Amazon Kindle allowing them to easily update their very wide and varying selection of vine.

Since we generally like to be surprised and we like the restaurants we visit to present us with what they think is their flagship courses we asked them to put together a menu for us which they happily did.

The first course to arrive was a spring roll filled with smoked guillemot and dates, dressed with Japanese mayo and bell peppers jam, a really interesting combo of traditional Icelandic sea bird infused with eastern influence, a fun and tasty appetizer but we agreed that we could only eat about one roll each.

Orange lobster balls with ginger pesto and orange sauce were our next appetizer to try out, it was delightfully garnished in a minimalistic way, the balls the selves were really tasty and melted in our mouths but what surprised us the most was the ginger pesto that was fitted wonderfully with the balls.

Now it was time for us to try out some beef! To our table was brought BBQ ribs topped with roasted sesame seeds and coleslaw on the side. On the outside it was a little too blackened in the charcoal oven but when you got to the meat on the inside it was tender and really juicy.

When you visit a steak house you wouldn’t expect to be able to get high quality seafood dishes but think again! Seafood and watermelon stick with southern salsa and tartar sauce is defiantly something worth considering on the menu, a fun contrast between grilled seafood that consists scallops, lobster and prawn and a grilled watermelon and really delicious.

Next up was the real reason we wanted to visit the Steakhouse, the steaks themselves, lamb ribeye and beef ribeye grilled in the charcoal oven with béarnaise sauce and cold pepper sauce, sweet potato fries, veggie tempura. You could literally smell the charcoal of the steaks and it also brought unique and interesting flavor to the perfectly cooked and tender steaks.

For deserts we were served two types, cheesecake with licorice and passion fruit sauce and a sundae duet with two types of ice cream, meringue and toffee sauce which both tasted superbly but in our opinion the cheesecake stood out as the winner of the two where the combination of licorice and cheesecake just work!

Prices are quite fair for this class of restaurant where starters range from 1.500 ISK / 12,50 USD to 2.250 ISK / 19 USD, main courses from 3.200 ISK / 27 USD to 5.800 ISK / 48 USD and deserts have a fixed price of 1.500 ISK / 12,50 USD.

We were really pleased with the over all experience, the service was really good and we just visited them on their first week they opened so we definitely be there again when they have worked out all of their opening quirks, which are honestly not that many for a restaurant in an opening week.

Follow TheFoodPerv.com

Location