I won’t go into a lot of detail about my experience at the Reykjavík Pizza Company. Located in the same building as the former Reykjavík Bagel Company, RPC still sells bagels as a part of their menu, but the main focus is now… pizza. And there are a lot of different pizzas to choose from, priced between 775 ISK (for a small cheese pizza) and 2,100 ISK (for a 16” pizza with loads of toppings). And many of these pizzas have imaginative topping choices, as was the case with my order, the Óði Haninn (the Crazy Rooster) – chicken, grilled pine nuts, Castania mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes and jalapeno peppers. Even though the walls of RPC are adorned with some truly atrocious animal portraits, and the background music selection, Sparklehorse (would you like to hear the line, “I wanna be a pig/I wanna suck a cock” whilst munching on pizza?), wasn’t the best dinner choice, I was optimistic about the meal itself.
Unfortunately, we had been waiting 45 minutes for our food to arrive when a couple that had placed their order 15 minutes after us received their pizzas. Our waitress told us she would check on our order. A few minutes later, she returned with two dry, lukewarm, overcooked pizzas – a sure sign that the pizzas had been left out, gotten cold, and were quickly thrown back in the oven for a brief reheating. The result was a flavourless, tough excuse for a pizza. To make matters more confusing, the place wasn’t even half full at the time, so not even the typical dinner rush explanation could account for this sloppiness. But the kitchen did.
RPC has an open kitchen. This is unfortunate for them, as on this night it was in complete chaos, while a few kitchen workers stood in a circle, talking. Also, two pizza peels – the tool that takes pizzas out of the oven – were resting with their blades on the floor, against the same dirty, rubber mat that people stood on as they put toppings on the pizza. While it’s not likely that this would transmit disease to your food, it certainly doesn’t look professional.
I would like to believe that this was just a bad night for the Reykjavík Pizza Company, but until some serious changes are made to the staff, the decor, the music choice and the organisation skills of the restaurant, it would be better to avoid dining there altogether. PN