A Winner Is Crowned At The Street Food Festival

It isn’t often that those of us living in Reykjavík can boast of good weather, good food, and a festive atmosphere all at once. But someone at the Reykjavík Street Food Festival 2024 must have made a sacrifice to the weather gods, because the festival — held for the fifth time between the 19-21 July — saw that magical combination of blue skies, warm sun, and delicious smells wafting from every direction. Music blared. Children squealed. It was like a Nordic souk, if you will.

30-something food trucks all gathered in Hljómskálagarðurinn to pick the winning stall. The prize? An opportunity to represent Iceland as Street Food Champion at the European Street Food Festival, at which champions from all over Europe will have a grand finale showdown in Saarbrücken, Germany.

If you build it, they will come

Robert Aron Magnusson, popularly known as Robbie Kronik from his DJing days, holds the rights to hosting the Icelandic leg of the Europe-wide festival. “I wanted to do something that would further the food experience in Iceland,” he says. “Granted, we are a few years — okay, many years — behind other food cultures, but we are doing it now, we are building it, and we are getting there.”

The format is simple. From a nationwide call for traders, a minimum of eight food trucks face off against each other, with the winner going to the finals. Judging is equally straightforward. According to the EFSA, a panel of industry experts, Michelin-starred chefs, influencers, and experts choose a winner based on a standardised criteria. This year saw restaurateur Ólafur Örn Ólafsson, performer Margrét Erla Maack, chef Fanney Dóra Sigurjónsdóttir, and Tiktok influencer Adam Karl Helgason on the panel. The public also gets to vote online.

Restaurants on the bandwagon

The festival, interestingly, is a mix of actual food truck ventures and restaurants that set up a stall — although in previous years the winners have all been truck traders rather than the restaurant weekenders. The pricing is more akin to restaurants than street food too, with most dishes hovering around the 2.000-3.500 ISK range. You can choose from a carefully curated roster of burger traders, a handful of Mexican taco stands, Colombian, Indian, some Japanese-adjacent food, and Spanish bites. There are trucks dedicated to deserts, too, from freshly fried churros, to doughnuts, to Liege waffles.

My favourite plates were the vegan empanadas from Mijita (a culinary bridge between Colombia and Iceland, as founder Maria Jiminez proudly proclaims), deep fried corn dough pockets that held creamy kidney beans and when eaten with the ‘Latin spicy’ sauces alongside, set my mouth on fire. The made-to-order tortillas in a bun from La Barceloneta was every bite of the creamy goodness of the humble potato-egg you’d expect in Spain. The roasted mushrooms served alongside the arancini from Silli Kokkur overshadowed every dish from their truck! But in the end it was Siggi Chef who took the crown with a popular brisket burger.

Stands and trucks to halls and malls

The festival itself has grown in recent years. I remember my first time, when just a handful of trucks were lined up around what is now the ferris wheel zone, by the old harbour. Back then, it was a few seasoned professionals like Fish & Chips Vagninn amidst newbies who wanted to perhaps try their hand at running a food truck (who can forget the very spirited empanada attempt by a brave teenager, or the out-of-a-box falafels by another). Today, competition is growing.

If you Google “what is street food?”, this is what the Oxford Dictionary definition is: “prepared or cooked food sold by vendors in a street or other public location for immediate consumption.” But banking on cashing in on the appeal of street food, food trucks have increasingly moved indoors, into food halls and malls.

Progressive gastronomic change

Given Iceland’s lack of homegrown street food culture, questionable weather, and regulations that actually allow vendors to set up shop outdoors until recently, the Götubitahátíð festival is a sign of slow but progressive gastronomic change. Efforts by people like Ólafur Örn who, incidentally, started the very first Icelandic street food festival at Fógetatorg, and the local industry continue to shape our local food culture.

The event draws more than 30.000 visitors, the organisers say. I do think however, that more competitive pricing and smaller festival-friendly portions would allow people to be more adventurous with their choices, and try more dishes. That said, the organisation itself was impressive. Drinks flowed easily, and the music was maybe a tad too loud — but hey, it’s a carnival! Complete with plenty of seating, appropriately placed, regularly emptied trash bins, well behaved pets, and the sun that they seemed to have ordered especially for the occasion.

And what could be better than that?

Read more about eating out in Reykjavík here.