Iceland review - 2016, Page 42

40 ICELAND REVIEW
while the history was kept intact. The restaurant was open for
business within eight months.
Indíana Auðunsdóttir, Gísli’s sister and the restaurant’s
manager, was in charge of designing the interior. She has
degrees in fine art and sculpture and is studying carpentry and
furniture making. “She brings, I don’t know how to describe
it, an ‘arty’ touch to everything,” Gísli says. The building’s
interior was repaired to almost its original state with many of
the old materials used, Indíana tells me. “The interiors were to
have a rustic feel; salvaged wooden floors, repurposed wooden
planks for tables and many objects and furniture from the
time it was a workshop,” she says of the design concept. “We
want to be as sustainable as possible—not just in the menu but
in our design and everything else.”
FRESH APPRECIATION
After launching Slippurinn, Gísli went on to work as a trainee
in New York at Luksus, Aska, Atera and Eleven Madison Park
restaurants, as well as a private chef in the French Alps, before
opening Matur og drykkur (‘Food and Drink’—featured
in the March-April issue of Iceland Review) in Reykjavík in
2015. Just 27 years old, Gísli has already garnered attention
in Iceland and abroad for his carefully-crafted dishes which
champion seasonal local ingredients.
Spending time working in other countries left him with a
fresh appreciation for Iceland. He is constantly on the lookout
for new ingredients sourced locally. “I was working in one of
the best restaurants in New York. They were importing oyster
leaf from Alaska for who-knows-how-much and I thought:
‘that grows back home on the beach!’ Sometimes you need
to go away to really see and appreciate what is right in front
of you,” he says. “I always start the day by going to the fish
market and choosing the fish of the day. Then I go out and
pick plants. I enjoy it so much, I get a lot from it,” he adds.
Gísli sources much of the vegetables he uses from the south
coast but his mother Katrín Gísladóttir grows the herbs and
salads in her greenhouse on Heimaey. “We’re always trying to
increase the amount of local ingredients we use,” he explains.
“Actually, my goal is to be wholly sustainable in a few year’s
time, be exclusively using ingredients from Vestmannaeyjar...
but it’s a big goal, I know.”
Also deeply passionate about Icelandic ingredients, Fanney
Dóra, who just returned to Iceland after working in the UK
FOOD