Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.06.2017, Qupperneq 56

Whether it’s Scottish “munchie
boxes” or Canadian poutine, there’s
something about cold northern cli-
mates that makes people embrace
a grease-up faster than Hulk Ho-
gan on wife-swap Wednesday. Ice-
land’s northern capital of Akureyri
is no exception. Forget meander-
ing along those picturesque fjords
watching seals poke their heads out
of the water—this is my five-stop
tour of Akureyri’s comfort (and dis-
comfort) food.
Mayo mayhem
Fast food in Akureyri falls some-
where between “highly addictive”
and “schoolboy dare,” and the only
logical place to start is the drive-
through Ak-inn. The name literally
translates as “drive in” but doubles
as a pun on the name of the town.
“Akureyringar” have a passion for
splicing AK in front of everything
(dibs on opening up a shooting
range there called AK-47).
At Ak-inn, you can get your
car washed while feasting on the
greasy glory that is their signa-
ture hot dog. It’s drowned in cock-
tail sauce and melted cheese, with
french fries and the omnipresent
seasoning (salt, paprika and MSG,
basically). This frankenwiener is
hard proof that you can score de-
cent weed in Akurey-
ri.
What downtown
Akureyri lacks in size,
it more than makes
up for in shouting. On
the day I arrived, teens
were being hauled in
on top of tractor wag-
ons, dressed as car-
toon characters and
wielding water pis-
tols in 6°C weather—
a part of the Nordic
college graduation
rituals called “dim-
misjón.” The polyester furry cos-
tumes provided scant protection
and seemed in fact to be soaking up
the water.
The perfect pint
That night I went to nearby pub
Götubarinn for a couple of pints.
Akureyri hasn’t been ravaged by
tourist accommodation like Reyk-
javík, so the locals are decidedly
friendlier and less jaded by the
whole experience.
Next it was time to coat my
stomach with some more grease
before heading to bed in my down-
town Acco guest house (short for
“AK Accommodation”—see what I
mean about the AK puns?). I was
eager to try the Aleppo Kebab, run
by a pair of Syrian refugees who
seem have bashed the business
plan together on the plane over to
Iceland, but unfortunately they’re
still waiting on their license.
Instead I went with Nætursalan, an
Akureyri institution catering to the
late-night weekend crowd. Their
selection is surprisingly broad, but
the locals advised me to ignore all
of that and go straight for Búkol-
la—a pizza loaded with beef strips,
bearnaise sauce and french fries. It
was actually kind of brilliant. But
maybe that was the pints talking.
Where’s my chippy?
The best of the bunch was Akurey-
ri Fish and Chips. Owner Hjör-
leifur “Lalli” Árnason took over
the operation in 2016. “The guys
who opened up Reykjavík Fish &
Chips decided to open a branch in
Akureyri, and tried to run it for a
year over the phone
from Reyk jav í k,
but it wasn’t work-
ing out,” he says.
“When they heard
I was moving back
to Akureyri, they
pleaded with me to
take over. I decided
to go with it, and
haven’t regretted it
for a second.”
T h e g r o w t h
i n tou r i sm ha s
changed Akurey-
ri rapidly. Even
though tourists still congregate
mostly in the south, business is
brisk. But it isn’t all luck—Lalli is
deadly serious about his fish. “My
fishmonger goes to the market
around 6am every morning, and
has his people fix it up,” he says. “I
gave him a set of keys to let himself
in so that when we arrive, the fish
is already in the cooler. We tried
an experiment with frozen fish
last summer and did a blind taste
test, but I didn’t even have to taste
it—just cutting through the crust I
knew which was the frozen one.”
For my money, Akureyri Fish
and Chips is the best cheap meal in
town. If you don’t believe me, head
over and do a blind taste test of your
own.
Staring your
meal in the face
The next stop was the dairy farm
and coffee house Kaffi Kú, ten min-
utes out of town. It’s built inside
a barn, with a dining area jutting
out into an active cowshed. And
let me tell you, you really haven’t
eaten until you do it sitting inside
a mezzanine cube suspended over
the animal you’re eating, with doo-
wop music echoing around you. As
the cows stared at me with studied
contempt, I sank my teeth into the
bagel burger with blueberry BBQ
sauce without breaking eye contact.
On the other side of the river
that runs through Akureyri, you’ll
find the best damn ice cream in
the north at the dairy farm Holts-
sel. This place has been slinging ice
cream for over ten years, and it’s as
farm-to-table as it gets. Make sure
to try the skyr ice cream with wild
Icelandic bilberries (they even make
the skyr from scratch). Their choco-
late and Madagascar vanilla could
go toe-to-toe with any artisan ice
cream shop in Reykjavík. I left with
an armful of ice cream and a couple
of pieces of darkly colored smoked
wild trout they were selling on the
side. I was also tempted to grab
their scruffy terrier Hamar (“Ham-
mer”). Hammer knew he wasn’t
allowed to eat the chickens or the
ice cream. Hammer is good boys.
Back to safety
Akureyri. It’s been real but I am
never leaving my house again.
Thank you for the warm welcome,
and for the type 8 diabetes (that’s
the kind where you piss icicles of
hardened glucose and your pan-
creas comes flopping out of your
body like a flounder). But most of
all, thanks for all the fish.

SHARE & PHOTO GALLERY:
gpv.is/travel
Thanks For
All The Fish
A Reykjavík foodie tours five
Akureyri fast food joints
Distance from
Reykjavík
380km
How to get there
Take Route One North
Frozen goodness Wtf is this thing? Auk eggs
Words & Photos: Ragnar Egilsson
“As the cows
stared at me
with studied
contempt,
I sank my
teeth into the
burger without
breaking eye
contact.”
We're still trying to figure out when this was shotI feel like chicken tonight
54 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2017