Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.11.2013, Blaðsíða 42

w w w . y u m m y . i s
1/10 Best Restaurants In Iceland
Best Goddamn Restaurant 2011
the best thai food
2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013
Laugavegur 130, ofan við Hlemm
Tel : 692-0564
w w w . b a n t h a i . i s
A l s o R e c o m m e n d . . . . .
y u m m i y u m m i Tel: 588-2121 H v e r f i s g a t a 123, 105 Rvk.
the finest Thai restaurant in IcelandBa Th i
I was so excited to visit Cava after
browsing their menu that the drooling
shorted out my keyboard. This review
was written with quill and delivered by
zeppelin.
To someone born outside of Ice-
land, Cava might not seem like much,
but after suffering through two decades
of stale burritos with second-rate
ground beef topped with fluorescent
guacamole, the sight of someone at-
tempting real Mexican food gave me
goose bumps.
So I descended into Cava with a big,
dopey grin on my face. And imme-
diately saw that they weren’t kidding
about the name. Steeped in darkness,
save for the occasional candle straining
against the night, as Kavinsky techno
plays at a conversation-diffusing vol-
ume and decaying faces bear down on
us from the walls. First impression—
Cava is a stuffed raven and a bottle of
Absinth shy of a goth bar. Perhaps the
stress of designing every restaurant
in Reykjavík is starting to affect Leifur
Welding’s mood.
These cocktails were brought down
by the bar staff at the upstairs Bunk
bar, which felt like an odd arrange-
ment considering that Cava was wildly
overstaffed. We counted five servers
for the room, most of whom spent the
duration of the evening either staring
blankly into space or showering us
with unwanted attention while neglect-
ing to clean the tables or removing the
menus. There were plenty of smaller
issues with the service, most of which
could have been cleared with a day or
two of proper training. The rules of
waiting have not been updated much
in the last 150 years and for this price
range I’d expect more.
In tune with the service of the
evening, the appetizers that were
ordered together arrived 10 minutes
apart. Having said that, I loved my
Ceviche Tropical (1,130 ISK) with
shellfish and mango and the Carne
Asada (1,090 ISK) filled with a type
of ropa vieja was a pungent morsel
and a nice window into the alterna-
tives to the usual taco fillings.
The main course consisted of
their two main red meat extravagan-
zas—Adobo (4,500 ISK) and Barba-
coa (4,900 ISK). The portions were
enormous—great big bulging meat
mountains in the Argentinean tradi-
tion. The Adobo was the lamb fillet and
the Barbacoa was the grilled rib-eye.
The lamb came medium-rare, with a
strip of fat and marooned in a swamp
of mashed spicy sweet potatoes and
salsa roja. The rib-eye came nestled in
a scoop of guacamole with a wreath
of roasted potatoes. The rib-eye didn’t
get in the way of the steak but didn’t
add that much to the dish either. The
sweet-potato mash with chilli is one of
my secret comfort foods so that was
a major plus in my book. Both dishes
worked because of a well-cooked hunk
of good-quality red meat.
For dessert we tried the Dulce de
Leche (990 ISK) and Pastel de Tres
Leches (990 ISK). I couldn’t tell the
flavour of the tres leches as it had been
suffocated under dulce de leche and
strawberries. The Dulce de Leche itself
was a fudge brownie that had suffered
a similar fate. What a fudge brownie
was doing there in place of the angel
food cake is anyone’s guess. The result
was as if Willy Wonka’s chocolate
factory had caught on fire and melted
with you still trapped inside and your
only recourse was to chew your way to
safety.
We ended up over-stuffed and
barely managed one post-dinner beer
before crawling home on our bellies
like overturned turtles.
Into The Cave
RAGNAR EGILSSON
NANNA DÍS
F D
For your mind, body and soul
Cava
Laugavegur 28, 101 Reykjavík
Tel: (+354) 578 3730
Thu–Sat: 18:00–1:00 (kitchen closes
at midnight)
Sun-Wed: Closed
What We Think:
Good first course, great main
course, lacking in spice overall.
Ambiance and service let the
kitchen down.
Flavour:
Mexican (mostly)
Ambiance:
Sombre-ero
Service:
Plenty of servers for a small
room but plenty of room for
improvement of service.
Price for 2 (with wine):
20–25,000 ISK