Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.08.2009, Síða 42

Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.08.2009, Síða 42
30 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 13 — 2009 Veltusund 3b, v.Ingólfstorg s: 445 4445 Shish Kebab Falafel Shawerma Travel | Destination Come to Daddi’s! The Lake Mývatn region explored via a pizza menu. Yes, a pizza menu. “Out of the 500.000 tourists that give Ice- landers the honour of their presence ev- ery year, 80 percent visit this mind-blow- ing natural treasure hidden in the North called Mývatn, so mind what you see.” Those were the first words our guide ut- tered at us Grapeviners when we finally arrived at this legendary haven, after nearly six hours of stuffy car-atmosphere, bad coffee and way too much gas. The truth is though that the alleged guide wasn’t really a guide, and our aim was definitely not to collect material for a cli- ché-ish tourist piece. Plenty of that to go around elsewhere. A SODOM ABYSS AND WOEFUL HOTEL EMPLOYEE Full disclosure: our “guide” and his spouse are rather good friends of ours, and one of our reasons for travelling up there was to check out their pizza parlour, Daddi’s, that they recently opened there in the wilderness. And to take in the amazing sights, of course. After glancing over the menu and rolling down a slice of the Grjótagjá, the idea of documenting the area through the menu came up. Let’s elaborate: the good people of Daddi’s have named every single pizza on the menu after every noteworthy sight in the area. Each pie’s name is meant to indicate their demeanour, appearance and vibe. This was of course an upright task to research, that is if they succeeded in replicating the sights with the pizzas and if a tasting menu of pizzas could even replace the sightseeing completely. Eat your way through Iceland. Ha. Since we’d already tasted the, well, the plain weird pizza Grjótagjá (which boasts of featuring the absurd topping combo of tuna and bacon), we’d of course have to dip our toes into the abyss. The locals call it Sodom Abyss, and they like to jump in there regularly—stripped to their toes— to sit in the boiling water buried in a cave. Like the pizza, the combo seemed odd. But the pizza was also surprisingly tasty, so we had hopes for Sodom Abyss. As soon as we had let the water boil our bare butts for few minutes, we discovered what all the fuss was about; the calm drone was genuinely soothing, the warm water softens your sturdy limbs and the nudity takes on an air of irrelevance. You couldn’t achieve an erection even if you really tried. Seriously. We got invited to a party at the local hotel after we’d dried the euphoria off us and gotten our heads straight. Thank god they don’t have a pizza named that party. It was packed with woeful kids that had obliviously travelled to the country to de- toxify the accumulated city ramshackle, but as in a slasher flick, their fantasy had gone horribly wrong. Simply put, there was a lot more boozing and debauchery than I’d ever witnessed in Reykjavík’s sloppiest after-parties. I can even think of a topping the pizza would have on top of it. But I won’t tell you what. FÊTE IN THE “CLEARING” AND NORWEGIAN BLACKMETAL After gulping the second day’s pizza portion, we had a lot on our hands: Dim- muborgir and Skútustaðir had to be ex- plored, gnats needed to be unearthed, Höfði had to be conquered and the no- torious cowboy had to be found. Skútu- staðir is an eminent farm near the village where they produce smoked trout, which is, alongside their rye, an area delicacy. Surprisingly, its pizza didn’t boast of any smoked trout at all, but it did have some mincemeat and bacon. The pizza was definitely a crowd-pleaser, but if old Daddi is going to replace the

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