Iceland street food view
Images by Nadia Moro per Essen | A Taste Magazine© | Img. 1, 2, 14 Reykjavík – Vesturgata | Img. 3 Reykjavik, macellaio di balene | Img. 4 chiosco nel porto di Reykjavik | Img. 5 Reykjavík – Lokastìgur | Img. 6, 10 Reykjavík – Laugavegur | Img. 7 Gullfoss Iceland | Img. 8 e 11 fattoria gli Skàlanes Iceland – Seyoisfjordur | Img. 9 Reykjavík – Baldursgata | Img. 12 Reykjavík – Ingolfsstraeti | Img. 13 Usavik – Laugabrekka | Img. 14 Akureyri
Recently the Northern Europe cuisine has penetrated the knowledge of many chefs to be shown to many tables of restaurants, especially in U.S and south Europe.
Flavors and lichens of the cold countries have merged with the attention to traditional cuisine of the Old World, but are the same northern countries who wants to rescue traditional dishes removing from French, English, Danish and Italian contamination that brought by trade, immigrants and emigrants home coming.
Iceland, among the countries of northern Europe is still a case in the case. Isolated and famous for imported raw food, has kept many traditional dishes somehow mixing with new ingredients of the soil, although even the Reykjavik food and fun festival has led in recent years almost exclusively foreign chefs in the event.
The Thorramatur is a selection of traditional Icelandic food “invented” and very popular in the 50s to celebrate the identity of the Icelandic winter festival in January and February, just to stress how culinary knowledge is important in the Isle.
With a subarctic vegetation of lichens and herbs, Icelanders eat mainly meat, fish and dairy products. Until the nineteenth century, there wasn’t the cultivation of vegetables, fruits and grains and in the absence of forest (which is in the hearth of the isle), tradition offered raw or processed foods and cold storage by excluding salt and smoking but using drying and fermentation.
With the trade monopoly imposed by Denmark’s king in the seventh century, the traditional Icelandic cuisine has undoubted a danish contamination not only with ingredients but also in cooking techniques.
The island produces over 80 types of cheese and the lamb is offered in many dishes and daily eaten, so as Skyr and Brennivin, liquor made by fermented potato mash and caraway seeds.
The attention to kiosks that can share rye bread soup, hamburger and fermented shark in Iceland has its own importance. First of all the Bæjarins Beztu situated by Reykjavik port which boasts a long queue of personalities to its tables and its delicious hot dogs and Hamborgarabúllan an “any place” to eat good burgers before ringing the bell to Bjork on the other side of the road.
