Words by

Ragnar Egilsson

Photo by

Supplied

A sustainably minded hotel restaurant located in the Borgarfjörður area pursues perfection as Japanese influences awaken Icelandic flavours 

Far off the beaten path, in a valley caressed by rolling hills, right at the lip of Iceland’s second-largest glacier Langjökull, you will find a little forest and a little forest clearing. In that forest clearing, far, far away from the bustling tourists of Reykjavík, some very enterprising and brilliant individuals have been left to their own devices over the long winter months, fine-tuning their menus and stoking the embers, creating something magical.  

Hótel Húsafell has been a beloved destination for locals and eco-conscious Europeans for decades. Surrounded by an abundance of hiking paths in this unusually verdant part of Iceland (thanks to geothermal energy; more on that later) and within axe-hurtling distance from the seat of the medieval scholar, lawyer, peace-broker, swordfighter, Europhile, historian and all-around wholesome male role model, Snorri Sturluson, the man who single-handedly preserved and midwifed Norse viking culture into posterity, Húsafell is more than just a pretty place. 

Spa warriors 

The family behind Hótel Húsafell embody a uniquely Icelandic combination of attitudes: the “fuck it, I’ll sort it out myself” of the rural business owner and a pioneering eco-warrior. The founders Kristleifur Þorsteinsson and Sigrún Bergþórsdóttir are the types of people who would jump out of a moving car to pick up a stray gum wrapper and lecture the person who disposed of it. They are also the types to look at a hill and say, “huh, I bet if we grab a core drill and a couple of wheelbarrows, we could carve a geothermal spa into that hill” long before the spa business took over Iceland.

We arrived in winter, and as much as we’d love to chat with some mountain air rescue people, we opted against hiking. The upside was that we got the Giljaböð geothermal baths all to ourselves. After heroically expending hours of nursing red wine, like bourgeois capybara, in the rocky pools under the glare of the northern lights, it was time to voyage back for one of the best meals I have had in 20 years of writing about food in Iceland. 

Driven to tears 

On the inside, you would be forgiven for mistaking the restaurant at Hótel Húsafell for any of a hundred hotel dining areas in any of a hundred hotels in Iceland. It has an air of gentle humility and devotion to craft, and this is not a restaurant that wears its emotions on its white sleeves. Unlike myself — who broke into tears at one point — but more on that later.

The vibe is calm, if not serene. This is not a place frequented by families with young children or loud business types. You’re more likely to find a pair of German hikers with groaning teenagers in tow, eager to get back to their real lives online. 

The menu is resonant with what Filip Gemzell has been doing at Restaurang Äng in Sweden, weaving together Japanese and Nordic food traditions into a seamless whole. Of course there are also some overlaps with Iceland’s two Michelin restaurants, Dill and Óx, but at half the price point of either.  

Tears of joy 

I know it’s an Icelandic cliché, but get whatever lamb is on the menu. I have eaten more lamb than a cartoon ogre in my time, but Húsafell is operating on another plane (on our visit it was a French rack infused with chamomile, black garlic miso and grains of paradise). Restaurants in West Iceland have been steadily improving, but this is still not a level of quality I’ve come to expect outside of the metropolitan area. 

It was all like that. I could bore you with lengthy descriptions of the locally sourced ingredients, the passion exuded all over the place, but you don’t need me to tell you that — that’s what AI is for. No, I took this experience right in the meaty chunks of my soul, and I want to trauma dump it on you.

It had been building up inside me over the meal, a feeling of gratitude and togetherness, along with a strange feeling of loss and longing. I think it’s what the German hikers at the next table would call “Sehnsucht”. By the time we got to the dessert (a rum and long pepper milk pudding with roasted koji barley ice cream), I couldn’t hold it back anymore.  

Perhaps it was the bottle of wine or some recent personal issues. Whatever the reason, I was completely overtaken by the beauty of the moment and ended up choking back the tears. This got the server going, who had been having a bit of a career crisis of her own, and the two of us stood there with tears in our eyes, me thanking her for the meal and for doing such an excellent job and her thanking me for kind words that seem to have come at the right time. It was more than a little ridiculous, having my Anton Ego moment in the middle of service. But this is what happened.  

Take the trip 

It’s been a rocky path for Hótel Húsafell, but Chef Ingólfur Piffl and his team have honed the menu to an exquisite edge. This makes me confident in declaring it as one of Iceland’s top-three restaurants. From the wild mushroom dumplings to the stroopwafel-like kinako crumble, it’s simply not an experience you can afford to miss.