What Icelanders Actually Eat (It's Not All Fermented Shark)

The pot is always too big.

That's the first thing I remember about my grandmother's kjötsúpa — the lamb soup she made every single Sunday of my childhood. She used a pot that could feed twelve people, even when there were only four of us at the table. When I asked her why, she looked at me like I'd asked why the sky was blue. "Because someone might come by."

Someone always did.

That enormous pot of soup, the steam fogging up her kitchen windows in Vesturbær, the smell of lamb and root vegetables filling every corner of the apartment — that's Icelandic food to me. Not fermented shark on a toothpick. Not a sheep's head staring at you from a plate. Those things exist, sure. But they're not what we eat on a Tuesday.

So let me tell you what we actually eat.

The Sunday Kjötsúpa Ritual

Kjötsúpa is lamb soup, and I'm not being dramatic when I say it's the emotional backbone of Icelandic family life. Every Icelandic person has a kjötsúpa memory. Every single one.

The recipe is deceptively simple: lamb (bone-in, always bone-in), potatoes, carrots, turnips, and herbs. That's it. No fancy stock reductions, no complicated technique. You put everything in a pot, and you wait. The lamb does the work.

But the ritual is the thing. Sunday kjötsúpa isn't really about the soup. It's about your aunt showing up unannounced. It's about the bread your uncle brought. It's about sitting at a table that's too small for the number of people around it, elbows touching, someone's kid asleep on the couch in the next room. The soup is just the excuse.

My grandmother added a handful of dried herbs from her garden — she never told anyone which ones. She took that secret with her. My mother has spent twenty years trying to reverse-engineer it. She's getting close, she says. She's been saying that since 2009.

If you're visiting Iceland and want to try the real thing, Café Loki across from Hallgrímskirkja does a proper bowl. It's not my grandmother's — nothing ever will be — but it's honest. You eat it, and you understand something about this country that no museum can teach you.

Pro Tip: Most traditional restaurants serve kjötsúpa as a lunch special. It's almost always better at lunch than dinner — fresher pot, less sitting time. And if it comes with a thick slice of rúgbrauð on the side, you're in the right place.

The Hot Dog That Runs This Country

I need to talk about pylsur.

Icelanders eat more hot dogs per capita than basically anyone on earth, and the national obsession centres on one tiny red stand by the old harbour: Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur. It's been there since 1937. Bill Clinton ate there. Every president of Iceland has eaten there. I have eaten there more times than I can count, often at 3 AM, which is the correct time.

The Icelandic hot dog is different from what you're picturing. The pylsa itself is made from a blend of lamb, pork, and beef — the lamb is what gives it that slightly sweet, smoky flavour you won't find anywhere else. And the toppings are non-negotiable: raw white onion, crispy fried onion (cronions, we call them, because they crunch), ketchup, sweet brown mustard called pylsusinnep, and remoulade.

You order it "eina með öllu." One with everything.

Three words. That's all you need.

There's always a queue at Bæjarins Beztu. Always. I've stood in that queue in horizontal rain at midnight. I've stood in it with a sunburn in June. I've stood in it next to a government minister and a teenager and a confused tourist who pointed at the menu and said "one, please" and still got exactly the right thing, because there's basically only one thing to get.

Pro Tip: The Bæjarins Beztu stand near Harpa concert hall is the most famous, but the one at Tryggvagata is the same quality with half the wait. Locals know.

Bread From the Earth, Fish From the Wind

Two foods that confuse visitors more than anything: rúgbrauð and harðfiskur.

Rúgbrauð is Icelandic rye bread, and in the countryside, people still bake it the old way — buried in the ground near a hot spring, left to slow-cook in the geothermal heat for up to 24 hours. The result is dark, dense, slightly sweet, and unlike any bread you've had before. It's almost cake-like. My family is from north Iceland originally, and up there, every household had a spot near a hot spring where they'd bury their bread pot. My grandfather would walk out in the morning, dig up the pot, and we'd have fresh rúgbrauð with butter for breakfast.

You can see this process for yourself at Laugarvatn Fontana on the Golden Circle, where they bake rúgbrauð in the hot black sand by the lake. If you're doing a Golden Circle tour, it's one of those details that turns a sightseeing trip into something you actually remember.

Then there's harðfiskur. Dried fish. Wind-dried haddock, usually, hung on outdoor racks until it turns into something that looks like a plank of wood and tastes like the ocean condensed into a chip. You tear off a piece, slather it with butter — real Icelandic butter, the good stuff — and eat it with your hands.

This is our protein bar. Our road snack. Our "it's 4 PM and I need something before dinner" food. Every Icelandic household has a bag of harðfiskur somewhere. It's in our DNA.

Visitors either love it or look at me like I've offered them cardboard. Fair enough. But give it a chance with the butter. The butter changes everything.

Pro Tip: Buy harðfiskur at Bónus or Krónan supermarket, not the tourist shops. Same product, a third of the price. And yes, you need real butter with it. Icelandic smjör. Accept no substitutes.

The Liquorice Problem

I should warn you about something. Icelanders are addicted to liquorice.

Not the soft, sweet red ropes you might be thinking of. I'm talking about salmiak — salty black liquorice that tastes like it's fighting you. We put it in everything. Chocolate. Ice cream. Schnapps. Sauce. There's liquorice salt you can sprinkle on fruit. There are liquorice-covered almonds that people give as Christmas gifts. My colleague keeps a bag of Draumur bars — chocolate-covered liquorice — in her desk drawer the way other people keep emergency snacks. It IS the emergency snack.

The national candy bar is Þristur, which is layers of chocolate and liquorice and wafer. Kids grow up on Nóa Kropp. The liquorice section in any Icelandic supermarket is twice the size of the candy section, which tells you everything about our national priorities.

If you want to lean into this, walk into any shop and ask for "lakkrís." Try Omnom chocolate's liquorice bar if you want something refined. Try a shot of Opal (liquorice-flavoured throat lozenges that we eat like candy) if you want something unhinged. Try Tópas liquorice ice cream at Valdís in Grandi if you want your mind quietly rearranged.

Most visitors approach Icelandic liquorice with suspicion. Smart. But give it three tries. By the third one, something shifts. I've watched it happen.

Skyr, Kleinur, and the Stuff Grandmothers Made

Let's clear something up about skyr. Every international brand calls it "Icelandic yogurt." It's not yogurt. Technically, it's a fresh cheese — a cultured dairy product made with its own specific bacterial cultures that Icelanders have been passing down for over a thousand years. A thousand years. The same culture, kept alive, generation after generation.

The texture is thicker than Greek yogurt. Creamier. A little tangier. Icelanders eat it plain, with sugar and cream (the old-fashioned way — my grandmother poured heavy cream over hers until it was basically a dessert), or with berries. The flavoured stuff in the supermarket is fine for a quick breakfast, but if you want real skyr, buy the plain KEA brand tub and do it yourself. You'll taste the difference.

And then there are kleinur.

Kleinur are twisted, fried doughnuts flavoured with cardamom, and the smell of them frying is the smell of every bakery, every grandmother's kitchen, every December in Iceland. They're not overly sweet — that's the trick. They're just sweet enough. Dense and satisfying and perfect with a cup of coffee at 3 PM, which is when Icelanders drink their third or fourth coffee of the day because this country runs on caffeine and stubbornness.

Every bakery in Reykjavík sells them. Sandholt on Laugavegur does beautiful ones. The Bónus ones in the plastic package are perfectly acceptable at 11 PM when you need one and nothing's open. No judgment here.

Pro Tip: If you see "snúður" in a bakery, grab one. They're cinnamon rolls glazed with chocolate or caramel, and they're a close cousin to the kleinur tradition. Brauð & Co on Frakkastígur makes the best ones in the city — the line out the door will confirm this.

Hangikjöt and the Smoked Things

Hangikjöt is smoked lamb, and it might be the single most Icelandic food that tourists consistently overlook because it doesn't have a shocking backstory. Nobody's going to film a reaction video of someone eating hangikjöt. It's just... incredibly good.

The lamb is smoked over birch wood or dried sheep dung — yes, dung, and before you make a face, the flavour is extraordinary. Earthy and deep and unlike anything you've smoked over hickory or mesquite. Hangikjöt is thinly sliced and eaten cold on bread, or served warm with potatoes and béchamel sauce, which is the traditional Christmas meal in many Icelandic homes. My family does it on Christmas Eve. The kitchen smells like smoke and butter and something ancient.

You'll find it in every supermarket deli counter. Eat it on rúgbrauð with butter. That combination — smoky lamb, sweet dark bread, cold butter — is probably my favourite thing to eat in this country, and I have been eating things in this country for my entire life.

For the full immersion, a Reykjavík food tour will walk you through most of these flavours in a couple of hours and give you the context that makes them make sense. Tasting hangikjöt while someone explains the smoking process and why Icelanders used dung in the first place — that's the kind of detail you can't get from a menu.

Yes, About the Shark

I know you're wondering. So let's address it.

Hákarl — fermented shark — is real. Svið — singed sheep's head — is real. These are traditional Icelandic foods with centuries of history, and they exist for very good reasons rooted in a time when you ate everything or you died.

Do Icelanders eat them regularly? No. Hákarl comes out during Þorrablót, the midwinter festival in January and February. Some old-timers eat it year-round. I am not one of them. The smell alone could clear a building. I respect it. I respect it from a distance.

Svið you can actually find at the BSÍ bus terminal cafeteria, of all places, and some people genuinely enjoy it. My uncle eats the eyes first. He says they're the best part. I have chosen not to investigate this claim.

If you want to try hákarl, the Kolaportið flea market downtown has a stand that gives out free samples. Try it. It's an experience. But please don't let anyone tell you that this is what Icelandic food IS. It's a footnote. A colourful, pungent, deeply memorable footnote.

What Icelandic food actually is? It's a bowl of lamb soup so good it makes you quiet. It's a hot dog in the rain. It's your hand tearing a piece of dried fish and reaching for the butter. It's dark bread that was cooked by the earth itself.

Where to Eat All of This in Reykjavík

A quick rundown of my actual recommendations — places I go, not places I send tourists to feel like they've "done" Iceland:

• Café Loki — Traditional Icelandic food done right. Kjötsúpa, rúgbrauð, harðfiskur, kleinur. Right across from Hallgrímskirkja.
• Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur — The hot dog stand. You know the one.
• Grillið — When you want lamb done with technique and theatre. It's a splurge and worth it.
• Brauð & Co — Snúður, kleinur, and coffee. The Frakkastígur location has the best energy.
• Valdís — Ice cream in Grandi harbour. Try the liquorice. Or the rhubarb. Or both.
• Sandholt — The grande dame of Reykjavík bakeries. Everything is good.
• Messinn — Fish pan specials that are absurdly generous. Get the plokkfiskur.
• Hlemmur Mathöll — The food hall. Multiple vendors, great variety, perfect if your group can't agree on anything.

And if you really want to go deep, combine a food-focused walking tour with an afternoon of exploring on your own. Get the guided context first, then go back to your favourite spots solo. That's how you eat a city properly.

Pro Tip: Reykjavík restaurants are expensive — there's no way around it. Budget tip: eat your big meal at lunch when many places offer reduced-price specials, grab a pylsa for an afternoon snack, and cook something simple for dinner from the supermarket. A bag of harðfiskur, some smjör, and a loaf of rúgbrauð from Bónus makes an honestly excellent meal for a fraction of the restaurant price.

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Here's what I want you to do. When you get to Iceland, skip the "Top 10 Weird Foods to Try" list. Walk into a bakery and point at the kleinur. Order a bowl of kjötsúpa somewhere warm. Stand in line for a hot dog at midnight. Buy liquorice you're not sure about and eat it anyway.

The real food of Iceland isn't strange or scary or extreme. It's comfort food from a small, cold country where people figured out how to make extraordinary things from very little. Every bite has a thousand years of survival and stubbornness behind it.

My grandmother's kitchen is gone now. The apartment in Vesturbær belongs to someone else. But every time I make kjötsúpa — in a pot that is, yes, too big — I'm back at her table, and someone might come by.

Someone always does.