The seventh season of Somebody Feed Phil dropped on Netflix on Friday so I’ve dropped the Georgia posts just for today to show you all the places Phil Rosenthal visited in and around Reykjavik and how to go there yourself. I’ve made a map so you can find all the places Phil ate in Iceland and I hope it’s useful if he inspired you to find out more about Iceland.
Let’s dive right in.
First up, Kleifarvatn, which is on the Reykjanes peninsula, although some way east of the recent activity. You can get there by turning left off the 41 between Reykjavik and Keflavik Airport and following road 42 south. I suspect this isn’t a great road, especially in winter. Once upon a time, an easier of much longer route would have been via Grindavik but the road down to the town is a) closed after the Blue Lagoon junction b) buried under very fresh lava, and then Grindavik itself is full of holes and cracks and closed to non-residents, so your alternative long but easy route is to take the Ring Road south-east out of Reykjavik to Hveragerði, turn right and follow the coast road back until you reach the Krýsuvik turning. Kleifarvatn is a little way up that road. Don’t expect a Gunnar with coffee and dried fish but if you want to try the bread or fish, you can find them in any supermarket or fuel station with a decent-sized shop. You’re probably already familiar with skyr, which seems to have made its way halfway across the world thanks to Danish dairy company Arla but real Icelandic skyr is actually a kind of cheese, not yoghurt, although it does look and taste pretty yoghurty. Go for local brand Ísey, which comes in far more flavours on shelf that they show on their website, for some reason.
Brauð & Co is actually a chain of bakeries in Reykjavik. The one Phil visits is on Frakkastigur, the road running from tourist high Street Laugavegur up to Hallgrimskirkja, the big modern church. Not the rainbow street, Skólavörðustígur but if you do walk up there, turn left at the top and this Brauð & Co is a little way down on the left.
Next up, lobster soup and fish kebabs at Seabaron/Sægreifinn, which is beside the Old Harbour, behind Harpa and near the whale-watching trips. That shade of teal-green-blue is unmistakeable – but also, Phil’s not the first person to bring a food show here. Rick Stein has also been. This place is pretty well-known. Stop by Harpa on the way, if you also want to bound up weird semi- sideways staircases and see Reykjavik through hexagonal glass panels.
Next we get a glimpse of a restaurant called Rok, the one with a turf roof although Phil doesn’t go inside, even though he dines with its architect. Rok looks good, though, and it’s also on Frakkastigur, a few doors uphill from Brauð & Co. Phil actually eats at Sumac, not far away, on Laugavegur, the aforementioned tourist street. If you’re inspired by Phil but don’t want to copy all his choices, there are plenty of places to eat and drink along this partly-pedestrianised street.
Silfra, the diving spot, is in my beloved Þingvellir, on the Golden Circle. PADI-certified divers can scuba in the crack and anyone can snorkel – but it has to be on a pre-booked tour. You can’t just turn up with your own kit and jump in. John’s right about the tectonic plates, by the way. Those low-ish black cliffs near where you probably parked are pretty much the edge of the North American plate but the edge of the Eurasian plate is about 3 kilometres away. Þingvellir, its rift valley, the lake and the little flooded side-chasms like Silfra are in a kind of geological no-mans-land where magma rose up to fill in the gap when the plates pulled apart.
The next question is more interesting: where is the beautiful blue hot water where the crew go? The establishing shots are Myvatn Nature Baths up in the north-east but the photos of the crew in mud masks are the Blue Lagoon, which is much more accessible if you’re filming in and around Reykjavik. If you’re up north, there are plenty of ways in which the Nature Baths are better but if you’re not… well, it’s a bit of a trek. By today, the Blue Lagoon may be closed. They’re predicting another short pressure-relieving eruption in the vicinity any minute and right now (Friday) it’s incomprehensible that it’s still open, particularly given that the magma chamber is right underneath and how vulnerable the potential evacuation routes are.
Back to the food and Phil is off to Italian restaurant Primavera, which is on the far side of the Old Harbour in the Grandi district, which I tend to think of as the Icelandic equivalent of somewhere like Shoreditch, and also home to FlyOver Iceland, Whales of Iceland, Lava Show, Aurora Reykjavik and the Saga Museum. Despite saying you can take a boat there, most of us will get there by foot (it’s pretty close to downtown Reykjavik) or bus (bus 14, destination Grandi). Primavera also has an outlet on the ground floor of Harpa, if you don’t want to go all way out to Grandi.
Grandi is somewhere I’d probably recommend for interesting places to eat that probably don’t appear in guidebooks, mainly because most guidebooks are too old. This area is regenerating at quite a speed. I’ll mention Dill too, since we have one of their chefs here. Dill is Iceland’s first real internationally- known fine dining restaurant although its location next to the Bonus supermarket on Laugavegur doesn’t scream premium. But it is!
Out of Reykjavik again and we’re off to Laugarvatn, on the Golden Circle, to make rye bread in the hot sands of the lakeshore. If you’ve ever watched a food show in Iceland, you’ll have seen Siggi digging up geothermal bread for the camera (Zac Efron did it). The hot spring here powers another geothermal pool, and they offer a pool/bread experience package so you too can try Siggi’s geothermal bread.
I chuckled a little at Skál in Hlemmur Mathöll being in an “old” bus station. I don’t know exactly when it became 100% a food hall but definitely in the last decade. I was there buying a multi-day ticket in Ferbuary 2015 and it’s still a major city-centre bus terminal, just one where you can’t buy tickets or sit inside on a hard plastic bench avoiding the winter weather – although I think I’ve heard news recently that they’re diverting the buses away from Hlemmur starting very soon.
Le Kock, where he goes for American-style food with his wife & daughter is up by the Old Harbour again, almost on the other side of the road from Sea Baron. This side of the Old Harbour is another of those cool places. Reykjavik’s famous flea market is just on the other side of the road, between Le Kock and the harbour, Reykjavik Art Museum is right here and there used to be a great place called the Volcano House right here on the corner – now long gone and I have yet to figure out whether it reopened elsewhere.
And last, the “library scene ” (you know, like in murder mysteries where the detective gathers all the suspects to tell them he/she’s figured it out, in great detail) is held at Matur og Drykkur, back at Grandi although this time on the corner of the Old Harbour, in the same building as the Saga Museum. Do take half an hour to explore that – scenes from Icelandic history, saga and legend, in a very atmospheric waxwork exhibit with Viking dress-up at the end. Matur og Drykkur is traditional Icelandic food, if perhaps of the kind more palatable to tourists than fermented shark and boiled sheep’s head.
And that’s it! I hope you found my guide to Somebody Feed Phil in Iceland useful. Thanks for reading!