Eat it: Iceland

The Icelandic Fish and Chips was my favourite meal of the trip. It was affordable and healthy, well, as healthy as fried fish can be. They're an organic bistro that use spelt flour and rapeseed oil! They provide dips made of skyr (an Icelandic yogurt that is sold everywhere) with different flavours. We chose (from left to right) coriander and lime, truffle and tarragon and tartar. The truffle and tarragon was by far our favourite. They have different fish to choose from depending on what they can get, I had a haddock and it was very flaky. The potatoes on the other hand were so so. Clockwise from the top: smoked puffin, lobster soup with cognac, Skyr, whale peppersteak and grilled puffin breast. We decided to splurge on a meal of Icelandic fare and found Hereford Steak House to give us the best bang for our buck. They had a whale or puffin prixe fix meal for $60. Puffin tasted like jerky and the whale tasted like a beef steak. It was pretty tasty but I don't have to have it again.

This is the infamous Icelandic hot dog, Baejarins Beztu Pylsur. It has fried onions at the bottom, topped with a weiner with remoulade sauce and Icelandic sauce (which tasted like mild mustard) squeezed on top. For $3.80, it was the cheapest thing I ate. I still think a Toronto street dog taste better, although I might be biased.

The Saegrefinn was an interesting restaurant, you first choose the already skewered fish and vegetables. Then they take it to the kitchen to grill it and then bring it to your table. The lobster soup was very good but I do suggest sharing it if there are two of you, it was very filling.

My last tip for eating on a budget in Iceland is to go to Bonus, a chain grocery store with a funny pig as their logo to buy food to make breakfast and snacks. We made breakfast every day and had dinner in the apartment once. Icelanders love organic food so all the vegetables we bought were organic. My omlettes have never tasted so good because the vegetables were much sweeter than the ones back at home! I really do miss those Icelandic eggs.

Read what to do in Iceland here.