Reykjavik for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Reykjavik eats small and eats seriously. The 101 postcode covers maybe a square kilometre of downtown, and a serious cook can walk between most of the kitchens on this list in under fifteen minutes, from the harbour edge at 2 Austurbakki to the top of Skólavörðustígur. What that compression produces is a scene where a Thai kitchen, a Basque tapas room, an Icelandic seafood grill and a wood-fired pizzeria compete for the same short winter evening, and where the honest restaurants pull ahead by cooking one thing well rather than everything passably. The twelve rooms below were chosen for that discipline. You will find a fine-dining counter at 2 Austurbakki that serves three distinct services a day, a vegan kitchen at 2 Aðalstræti closed Mondays, and two very different addresses trading as one at 2 Bankastræti. This is a list for a traveller with three or four dinners in Reykjavik and no interest in wasting one.