The best way to get a good taste of Iceland cuisine, land and sea, is to go to an amazing restaurant and do a menu tasting.
Pictured above are four of my favourite dishes from the tasting menu at KOPAR during my visit to Iceland. Keep reading to see what else I ate!
Kopar is located near the old harbour, with a beautiful view out to the dock and the water. Kopar is owned and operated by Chef Ylfa Helgadóttir. She focuses on utilizing Icelandic ingredients, from the land and sea, and it is shown through a majority of the items seen on the menu.
The dining area downstairs has more of a rustic, old feeling.
Where as the dining area upstairs is more modern and formal. I loved the view from upstairs, but I am also sure that downstairs is lovely during the day with the large windows.
With a nice patio outside, I can't imagine how lovely it would be to just relax outside in the summer time!
With walls of alcohol, what to drink?! Their drink menu is very exhaustive so we decided to stick to cocktails. During Taste of Iceland, I got a chance to try Chef Ylfa's famous Violet Mojito (rum, lime, mint, blackberry). V ordered that and loved it - it is a definitely must order if you ever visit! This drink won an award during a Cocktail Competition in Iceland a couple years back.
I decided to go with the Apple & Ginger (vodka, apples, ginger, lemon juice). I've never ordered a cocktail with ginger in it before, but it gave this drink a nice kick!
Once seated, we were advised that we would be having the Kopar Adventure tasting menu that consisted of 9 courses - yes please!!!!
Like any other restaurant, we were started off with some bread. But unlike any restaurant, the butter that we were provided was covered with licorice salt. I was scared to try this since I don't like licorice (people in Iceland LOVE licorice lol), but it actually wasn't bad at all! It just tasted like salty butter.
Every night, the kitchen prepares something small for all it's guests. Today, it was a little chip with a bite of steak tartare (and something something, that I unfortunately do not recall!)
And then quickly, before we could do anything, our table was filled with our first three courses.
These little baby fried things are cod tongues served with sherry & garlic, flavoured cream cheese
and lemon dip. These were warm, and so delicious. This was my first time having cod tongue and it was perfectly flaky!
Duck spring rolls, with date sauce and pear salad. With a crispy outside, this had a good little crunch to it with the sauce and duck filling.
And then for the mains! Eating this dish a second time,
& it still blew my mind as to how delicious it was.
Icelandic filet of lamb with crispy fat served with mushrooms, carrots, garlic, and truffled potatoes - absolutely divine. One of my favourites by Chef Ylfa!!
This is the lightly grilled atlantic tuna served with figs and chunky pumpkin and cranberry puree. It is also topped with almonds and hazelnuts toasted with spices and a warm pumpkin salad with dill and quinoa. Such a mouthful of a description, but absolutely delicious. It was like tuna sashimi :)
This is the grilled tusk with bacon, pesto, basil sauce and broccoli tempura on a bed of kale. It was absolutely divine. The tusk was so flakey and all the flavours worked so well together!
This dessert tier came with three plates of Kopar's popular desserts.
Chocolate cake served with berries, vanilla ice cream and almonds. This was my favourite dessert out of the three!! I just love chocolate cake (and I've realized that they serve this at any restaurant here!)
Warm caramel cake with peanuts paired with red currant sorbet, mascarpone and white chocolate mousse and warm caramel.
Daim Cheesecake, a soft cheesecake with raspberry sauce, skyr sorbet and white chocolate
We actually ended up eating for 4 and a half hours lol! But I had an amazing experience at Kopar and definitely went on a Kopar adventure through the 9 courses we had above. The service was amazing, and execution of all courses were flawless. As mentioned before, I would really love to visit Kopar during the summer months as it is near the harbour - I can see it being a really cute date spot!
Overall, I would highly recommend visiting Kopar for their tasting menu if you want a true Icelandic cuisine experience.
*This meal was complimentary, however, please note that all my opinions made are my own.*
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