Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.03.2017, Side 51

A Big-Ass Celery
Near Everyone’s
Favourite Church
A brunch is cursed after being bitten
by a popular tourist attraction

Words Ragnar Egilsson Photo Art Bicnick
Rok
Frakkastigur 26, 101 Reykjavik
Phone: 544 4443
www.rokrestaurant.is
Every day 11:30 am - 11:00 pm
Rok is a beautiful building. It’s un-
derstated and unobtrusive, and
its architecture refer-
ences the turf-roofed
houses that once domi-
nated Iceland, done in a
contemporary style. The
interior is similarly a nice
balance of sharper geo-
metric forms and softer,
organic materials. And
you simply couldn’t ask
for a better location, right
smack next to Reykjavík’s most-
photographed structure. Which
begs the question: why wasn’t I
wowed by the food? If I had to assign
blame, I’d start with the location.
Around the corner, the people
at Café Loki have similarly begun
to rest on their laurels. A guaran-
teed steady flow of hungry tour-
ists means that you don’t need to
work as hard to charm them, nor
to establish a consistent customer
base. It’s the same phenomenon
you’ll witness near any Times
Square, Strøget, or Colosseum. Be-
cause all the ingredients are there,
literally and figura-
tively. It’s an inviting
place with a nice view
for people-watching
on sunny days; the
New Nordic and am-
biguously Mediterra-
nean menu is a pretty
safe bet in this day and
age, and in this part of
the world. But, sadly, it
left a meagre impression.
Their Sunday brunch menu has
a pretty decent deal where you
can pick two dishes for 2590 ISK.
Granted, the individual dishes
aren’t enormous, but you could do
worse. The problem is both in the
strange composition and the ex-
ecution. The beef sandwich (1690
ISK) with nuts, dates, cabbage,
hollandaise, and chili teetering on
top of a single slice of sourdough
(not technically a sandwich, but
who needs the carbs) was both a
weird congregation of ingredients,
and surprisingly straightforward.
But it was a heavy dish, and landed
about as subtly as a high striker
mallet. I didn’t taste much that
put it over a Philly cheesesteak or
a New York chopped cheese. Next
was the Spanish omelette (1290
ISK), which I will bet good money
was made with pre-boiled or par-
boiled potatoes, and barely saw a
lick of real olive oil. That’s a seri-
ous offense when the dish con-
sists of three ingredients, and the
heresy was compounded with a
mound of salsa and guacamole.
The “Egg Islandaise” (1690 ISK)
was a poached egg over citrus-
cured salmon on sourdough. This
was the most solid dish out of the
bunch. The slice of orange was
unnecessary, but the egg was on-
point, and cured salmon is a safe
bet. The side of American pan-
cakes with blueberries and rhu-
barb syrup (1290 ISK) didn’t really
live up to the description. I like
all the ingredients individually,
but the pancakes were soggy and
spongy, and the serving of syrup
came in an adorable doll-sized
pitcher but didn’t give much of a
rhubarb kick.
Finally, there were the cock-
tails: a pair of bloody Marys (1890
ISK) and an Irish coffee (1690 ISK).
The bloody Marys came with a gi-
ant rib of celery which, in a sneaky
budgetary move, took up half the
volume of the glass. The rest of
the glass contained lemon, water,
and ice from the taste of it. The
Irish coffee was fine. “No one un-
der sixty orders Irish coffee,” you
say? Screw you! No one but God
can judge me!
The service was amicable, but
with forgotten orders, glasses of
water arriving right before we left,
and general inattention despite
a two-to-one ratio of customers
to employees, it wasn’t the saving
grace for a mediocre meal.
The verdict? I’d come there for a
beer on a sunny day in a heartbeat,
but I’ll be going elsewhere for my
grub unless Rok aspires to tran-
scend its undemanding location
in better ways than with architec-
tural appeal and celery ribs the
size of walking canes.
SHARE: gpv.is/rok03
1 0 1 Ó Ð I N S T O R G R E Y K J A V Í K Í S L A N D S N A P S B I S T R O . I S
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F R E N C H O N I O N S O U P
I c e l a n d i c Í s b ú i c h e e s e , c r o û t o n s
2 . 3 0 0 . k r
M O U L E S M A R I N I È R E S
s t e a m e d m u s s e l s f r o m B r e i ð a f j ö r ð u r
2 . 4 0 0 . k r
F I S H O F T H E D A Y
c h e f ´ s s p e c i a l
3 . 8 0 0 . k r
E s t . 2 0 1 2R e y k j a v i k
“No one
under sixty
orders Irish
coffee,”
you say?
Screw you!
51The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 03 — 2017