Words by

Chandler Fredrick

You can talk all you want about your braised lamb shanks, your fancy baked Alaskas, and your filet mignons in milky French sauces. But when it comes right down to it, if you were on death row and you had to pick your last meal, you’d ditch all that Food Network and Iron Chef nonsense for some good old fashioned comfort food. As a final farewell to your parting taste buds, you’d ask the governor for a cheeseburger so rare it still moos, crunchy seasoned French fries and a super-sized, politically incorrect Coke. The inmates on any Texas or Oklahoma death row pretty much all go with this one for their last meal, and I think that once again their aim is dead-on. Don’t believe me? Check out deadmaneating. com. Pretty fascinating stuff.
Eiki Feiti (or “Fat Eric’s”) is a no-nonsense burger joint and if it had any more kooky wall drawings of cartoons sequentially getting fatter from cheeseburgers it would have to go in a shack. Instead, it’s underneath The Highlander (where you can get a beer and an Eiki Feiti burger for an impressive 1000 ISK) in a room with long mirrors that might be there as some sort of strange joke. What’s even stranger is that this place has got a John Travolta movie poster for “Lucky Numbers” (the cook joked that he couldn’t find a Scarface poster, but I can’t think of anything with a greater surplus than Scarface posters).
I got an Eiki Feiti special (900 ISK), which included a drink, perfectly crispy french fries with cocktail sauce and a sopping rare cheeseburger with hamburger sauce, tomato, lettuce, and buns that were way too big for the patty. But hey, gives us this day our daily bread, right? This thing brought me back to going into burger shacks on the beach in LA after a long self-indulgent day of surfing. My friend shrugged at the concept of arteries and ordered a Bacon Burger (690 ISK), which came with onions and was just as good as my burger. Other menu highlights included fish and chips (790 ISK), a BBQ burger (550 ISK).
Eiki Feiti is unpretentious and flat out good. When I’m eating a hamburger I don’t want to be assaulted by glossy pictures of aging rock stars. I’ll take this place over “American Style” any day of the week.