Reykjavík Grapevine - 18.07.2014, Page 27

Yet, compiling the BEST OF REYKJA-
VÍK, half-absurd as the act may be, is
always a deeply satisfying endeavour.
The best part is: it is an opportunity
to give kudos and profess gratitude to
the various establishments and phe-
nomena that enrich our day-to-day,
that make life in Reykjavík a tad more
bearable. Just as importantly: it pro-
vides a welcome chance to do a little
inventory of the city we hold so dear,
to poll friends and strangers and you
reader types out there on what awe-
some stuff we might be missing out
on—and then traipse around sam-
pling various goods and services. Fun
times!
Browsing through our old BEST
OF issues (we made the first one way
back 2009) is in many ways akin to
opening a time capsule—the further
back you go, the more the BEST OFs
feel like a sort of partial census of
what was going on back then, what
people professed to like at the time,
where their ambitions lay (say, being
fancy and slick, or beardy and rug-
ged) and which places were around in
general. In post-collapse 2009, for in-
stance, being “affordable” was a very
important factor of any given estab-
lishment’s appeal (for a fun compari-
son, measure that yardstick against
our 2014 BEST OF list, featured in
this very issue).
Browsing through those old BEST
OF issues is also sure to make any
Reykjavík mainstay well up a little.
The city is a chaotic, fast-changing
beast, and its commercial ventures es-
pecially are notoriously fickle, prone
to vanish at the drop of a pin, just as
quickly as they sprang into existence
in the first place.
Below, a sampling of some estab-
lishments that we used to love. And
now they’re gone. Good night, sweet
princes. Fare thee well.
Segurmo
Best Goddamn Restaurant,
2009
Segurmo was our first ever BEST
GODDAMN RESTAURANT—in fact,
we created the category specifically
so we could reward Segurmo for be-
ing so wonderful. It was everything
a BEST GODDAMN RESTAURANT
should be: plentiful, consistent, tasty
and cheap.
Segurmo was situated within
the confines of still-going-strong
Laugavegur bar Boston, where chef
and proprietor Númi Thomasson
(now of perennial BEST GODDAMN
RESTAURANT Snaps—coincidence?)
concocted a fresh menu of newfan-
gled takes on Icelandic classics every
week, the fare priced to fit the bud-
gets of lowly students and freelance
workers alike.
Oh, how sweet it was.
The dream was short lived though.
A mere month after we declared Se-
gurmo to be Reykjavík’s BEST GOD-
DAMN RESTAURANT, and less than
a year after it opened for business,
the place shut down for good. While
many speculated that their mark-ups
had simply been irrationally low, eat-
ing up any potential profit, chef Númi
commented to the press that Segurmo
was just too much work, that he need-
ed some time off to read books and
meet his friends (selfish much?).
Regardless. For a brief period of
time in the late noughties, Reykja-
vík’s serfs and peasants could start off
their night at the city’s trendiest bar
by gorging on a meal fit for royalty. It
was beautiful. And we are thankful.
The first cut is the deepest. Segur-
mo, we hardly knew ye.
Karamba
Best All-Round Bar, 2009
Popping up unexpectedly in the
spring of 2009, Karamba was all
whirlwind, heat and flash for a very
brief window of time, before fizzling
and fading into eternity. Like prob-
ably a third of every Reykjavík bar
that’s ever existed, Karamba was
located on the street level space at
Laugavegur 22 (currently host to the
wonderfully neutral, always welcom-
ing Bravó).
In retrospect, it’s kind of hard to
discern what made Karamba so spe-
cial for a few months in the summer of
2009. Aside from sporting wall deco-
rations (by folks like Grapevine comic
artists Hugleikur Dagsson and Lóa
Hjálmtýsdóttir), it was pretty much
like any other bar out there.
Except, it wasn’t! For the couple
of months that passed after Karam-
ba’s crowd expanded beyond inbred
101 artiste regulars (and before that
expansion started encompassing ob-
noxiously drunken teenagers. Note
to bar owners: nobody likes teenag-
ers), Karamba was a glorious place
to visit at any time of day or night.
Bloody Mary afternoons over board-
games, intense dance parties at three
AM and the occasional impromptu
concert, Reykjavík’s bars have spent
years attempting to synthesize the
atmosphere Karamba so effortlessly
oozed during its peaks, to no avail.
Súpubarinn
Best Soup, 2010
Back in the day, hip, culturally conscious
youngsters would head to the Reykja-
vík Art Museum at lunchtime. Why? To
gorge on affordable, inventive and fairly
priced soups at Súpubarinn (“the soup
bar”). Those soups, they were delicious,
they were affordable, they were slurped
down in a very artful, Erró-heavy envi-
ronment.
And now they are gone. No soup for
you.
Piri-Piri
Best Family Restaurant, 2010
Piri-Piri was some brave entrepreneur’s
attempt to recreate fabled UK chicken
chain Nando’s by the Reykjavík harbour
before that area was all the rage (without
having to pay any pesky licensing fees).
Piri-Piri’s take on Nando’s was pretty
decent, although nothing to write home
about (unless maybe you have a really
boring life and the only other thing you
could write about was your trip to the
post office to mail that very letter). How-
ever, the restaurant’s saving grace was its
gargantuan, luxuriously outfitted play
area, where despairing parents could
safely dump their kids while they enjoyed
some overtly moderately spicy chicken
and a beer.
Sódóma Reykjavík
Best Newcomer Bar, 2010
You know that place, Gaukur á Stöng?
That slightly rock-themed bar-slash-
live venue by Hafnarstræti that’s always
playing host to some metal concert or
other and has chilled Jäger shots on tap?
Or is it called Gamli Gaukurinn now? Or
perhaps something else? Just Gaukurinn,
maybe? Well, in 2010 a group of ambi-
tious music lovers opened up a slightly
rock-themed bar-slash-live venue in that
very same space. During its brief lifetime,
Sódóma Reykjavík played host to various
metal concerts and sold many shots of
chilled Jäger.
It was pretty great, while it lasted.
Hvíta Perlan (2010-2011) /
Úrilla Górillan (2012)
Best Place To Watch
Sports Over A Beer
Hvíta Perlan and Úrilla górillan were
high concept sports bars where you could
watch sports over a beer. If memory
serves, one succeeded the other at the
same Austurstræti location. At least one
of them (possibly both) had 3D TVs, back
when those were a thing. Anyway, those
places are gone now, but televised sports
still remain, and so does beer. Don’t be
sad.
Hemmi & Valdi
Best Place To Start The Night
(2010/2011)
Nicknamed Hemmi & Valdi, this cutesy
bar/café in the legendary Hljómalind
building (miss u, Kiddi Kanína) on
Laugavegur was a somewhat essential
stop for any cultured persons making
the rounds in 101 a few years back. An ex-
tremely chill locale, Hemmi & Valdi was
a perfect place to sit down with a pint or
two and enjoy some audible conversation
(even from nearby tables)! And if you’d
start feeling rowdy, you could always
climb to the second floor and work off
your agitation at the foosball table. The
bar even doubled as an impromptu con-
cert venue, with many of Reykjavík’s cur-
rent crop taking their first steps towards
stardom.
As all the wonderful establishments that
have been operated at that location, Hem-
mi & Valdi was eventually forced to move
out to make way for some dumb real
estate monstro-deal that never actu-
ally gets built (thank god, though).
Compiling the BEST OF REYKJAVÍK has always been, at best, a half-absurd proposition.
As much as we love our city, it is a tiny one, a miniscule one. It is a city that hosts exactly two
competitors for the category of ‘best Indian food’, in a country where the Prime Minister
ceremoniously and reverently chomped down the first Big Mac served at the island’s first
McDonald’s franchise back in ’93 (miss u, cheap cardboard hamburgers and delicious fries).
Words by Haukur S. Magnússon
Photos Various
The Ghosts
Of Best-Ofs Past
27The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 10 — 2014Best Of Reykjavík!