The Fish Company: Deconstructing Icelandic Cuisine
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A glowing moose head watches. Candlelight maps the wood carvings of Icelandic daily life—complete with Kama Sutra scenes—across the dining room walls. The Fish Company, or Fiskfélagið if you're feeling linguistically adventurous, occupies the sweet spot between intimate and playful that most restaurants spend years trying to achieve. The decor suggests someone with both sophisticated taste and a mischievous sense of humor curated the space, resulting in an environment that feels relaxed enough for experimentation.
Which proves fortunate, considering the menu requires an open mind and trust in culinary alchemy.
The "Around Iceland" tasting menu functions as edible cultural anthropology, taking traditional dishes from various regions and reimagining them through a contemporary lens. This isn't fusion cuisine—it digs into Iceland's food heritage and reassembles the findings into something that honors tradition while refusing to be bound by it.
The approach becomes clear with the first course: cod with shrimp, apple slices, and celery carpaccio, united by dill mayonnaise and apple vinaigrette. Each element exists independently on the plate but creates harmony when combined, like a Nordic flavor orchestra where every instrument plays its part without losing individual character.
The salmon course elevated this philosophy further—egg yolk cream, pickled onions, and fennel salad, with a wisp of herb foam folded in. Every bite offered multiple textures and flavors that shifted as you ate, creating a dynamic dining experience that made you slow down and pay attention.
Even the bread service participated in this reimagining project, arriving with house-made lava salt butter that managed to make something as fundamental as bread feel like discovery.
The dessert course demonstrated what happens when chefs stop asking "should we?" and start asking "what if?" Soft spruce sponge cake paired with Icelandic skyr sorbet, accompanied by salted caramel and whey cream, lemon meringue, and oatmeal crumble, all delicately topped with what they called spruce "snow."
It looks elaborate enough for Instagram, and it tastes even better. Each component contributed to a composition that tasted like walking through a Nordic forest after discovering hidden treasure. The spruce elements provided earthy, almost piney notes that shouldn't work in dessert but absolutely did.
The willingness to incorporate ingredients like pine needles and lava salt into refined preparations speaks to a culinary confidence that comes from deep understanding of local ingredients rather than novelty-seeking tourism.
Iceland's culinary traditions developed from necessity—preservation techniques, limited ingredients, harsh climate constraints that demanded creativity for survival. The Fish Company's approach honors this innovative spirit by applying the same creative problem-solving to contemporary dining, asking how traditional dishes might evolve if freed from historical limitations.
The deconstruction philosophy extends beyond individual dishes to the entire dining experience. Service feels knowledgeable without being precious, explanations accompany courses without turning into lectures, and the overall atmosphere encourages exploration rather than intimidation.
This is sophisticated cooking that refuses to take itself too seriously, which seems particularly Nordic—technical skill balanced with playful irreverence, innovation grounded in respect for tradition
The Fish Company represents what makes Reykjavik's dining scene compelling: restaurants that embrace their geographic isolation and cultural uniqueness rather than trying to replicate international trends. The menu reads like a love letter to Icelandic ingredients and techniques, translated into contemporary language without losing original meaning.
The quirky decor and experimental approach could feel gimmicky in less capable hands, but the kitchen's technical skill and genuine understanding of flavor makes every unusual combination feel purposeful rather than random. This is culinary storytelling where each dish narrates a chapter of Iceland's food culture through modern interpretation.
Some restaurants deconstruct dishes to show off technical prowess. The Fish Company deconstructs them to reveal hidden possibilities within familiar traditions.
You leave satisfied and a little smarter about Iceland—tradition revealed by taking it apart.
