Reykjavík Grapevine - 28.08.2009, Qupperneq 42

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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