Words by

Bart Cameron

Bezt í Heimi: The Truck at Prikið
You can use the Icelandic “vörubíll” if you want, but everyone will look at you funny. No, when you enter Prikið at the hour of the grimace, 2 pm on a Saturday, you should wander upstairs, wait for your server, and announce that you want “The Truck.”
The Truck, called by some “the American breakfast,” includes two sunnyside eggs, fried potatoes, a half a pig of bacon, toast and, inexplicably, two pancakes. If this is an American breakfast, it is the American breakfast of 1952.
If you want to, you can think about how happy people in America were in 1952, as you chomp on your bacon and look around at musicians and poets who are just getting their day going. And you can even get starry-eyed and think, Hey, Iceland in 2005 is similar to America in the 50s. The economy is picking up, not too many people are being left behind… all these poets and musicians may build the country.
But don’t think about this too much: Americans in 1952 were eating breakfasts like The Truck at 6 am, before going to work, where they would put in hours under stressful conditions that would give Magnús Scheving a heart attack—pounds and pounds of bacon and eggs balanced off with workload and debt in the great American generation to form a double negative. If you’re spoiled enough to live in Reykjavík in 2005, and you can afford the 1100 ISK for the Truck, the only negative is your slacker ass chompin on cholesterol when you should be off building the
Icelandic identity.
All of these thoughts may go through your head in the 30 minutes it takes to eat a Truck. Luckily, the meal is so heavy that it will throw you into a sweaty stupor, and, unless you are superhuman, you will most likely go home and nap and wake at 6 pm to start the day right.