Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2016, Blaðsíða 55

Hverfisgata 12 · 101 Reykjavík
Tel. +354 552 15 22 · www.dillrestaurant.is
Lífið er saltfiskur
#109 Dill is a Nordic restaurant with its
focus on Iceland, the pure nature and
all the good things coming from it.

It does not matter if it’s the
ingredients or the old traditions, we
try to hold firmly on to both.
There are not many things that make
us happier than giving life to old
traditions and forgotten ingredients
with modern technique and our creative
mind as a weapon.
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Restaurants
Find the best food in Iceland!
Download our free dining app, CRAVING
on the Apple and Android stores
Suburban Foraging
Pokémon Go For Foodies And The Phoneless
The only thing missing from Póke-
mon Go is the ability to eat what
you catch. Pókemon are only de-
tectable with two senses, sight
and sound, and you need a smart-
phone for that. Without smell,
taste, and touch, you still feel like
you’re inside something, protected
from something. Adventures into
nature should envelop you com-
pletely. The hunter must use all her
senses to track her prey. What if I
told you that you could find rare
and delicious treats around your
neighbourhood? That you could
capture them and eat them fresh,
or preserve them by drying or pick-
ling and have them all year round?
What if you could do all this for
free and without 4G?
Ragnar Eiriksson, the head chef
at Dill Restaurant (winner of Best
Place To Get A Fancy Meal in our
recent Best of Reykjavík awards),
has spent many years foraging for
fresh herbs and wild mushrooms.
Since working at Dill, Ragnar has
foraged on his way to work from
his neighbourhood in Grafarholt.
“I basically grew up around here.
It’s my neighbourhood. I would bi-
cycle to work most days and stop
every time I saw something,” says
Ragnar while pulling out his pock-
et knife. “It ended up being a long
commute.”
Ragnar bends over and takes a
clipping of hundasúra, sheep’s sor-
rel. He hands me a leaf. “You can
always tell if it’s [Sheep Sorrel] or
not by the leaves. They have a little
dovetail near the stem and they
taste like rhubarb.”
“What if you make a mistake
while foraging?” I ask knowing I
will try and duplicate his guidance
to almost anyone who walks with
me from now on.
“Well, we’re lucky in Iceland.
Most things can’t kill you. They’ll
just taste bad,” he says with a grin
raising his beard. “In Norway, a few
people die a year eating the wrong
stuff when foraging.”
Herbs like angelica, arctic thyme
and sheep’s sorrel can be found
in almost any field or backyard in
Iceland. You can use them fresh or
pickle them or dry them. Also, you
can check the rosebushes around
town and if the pedals are loose
and about to fall off from the wind,
collect a big bag of them. You can
boil those with water and sugar
and make a rosewater or rose syrup
to make a sorbet.
While picking arctic thyme in
the rocks above the bay in Grafar-
holt, Ragnar decides he wants to
find some succulent plants called
blálilja, or oyster plant, which
should be closer to the water.
“They should be just down here,”
he says, leading the way.
Just then, two young boys’ heads
pop out of a bush of Angelica, look-
ing at us quizzically and raising
their phones to their faces.
“They probably think we’re look-
ing for Pókemon,” I say to Ragnar.
“We’re not… close though!”
We make one more stop on our
way back to Dill. There’s a bunch of
lovage growing around the Danish
Embassy.
“The problem with foraging
downtown is drunk people might
have pissed on the plants,” Rag-
nar says stoically. “I often try to go
through my memories and think…
’have I ever pissed here?’ Because if
I have, probably everyone has. You
can just rinse it off, though, and try
not to think about it.”
SHARE: gpv.is/nah
Words YORK UNDERWOOD Photo ART BICNICK