Nostra in Reykjavik, Iceland
This is ranked higher than the amazing Grillid on Tripadvisor, so we were really excited to check them out. While still a nice experience, this was certainly not as good as the one we had at Grillid, despite costing a similar amount (12,900 ISK).
My notes from the meal:
- lovely design of the restaurant, lots of interesting glass and mirrors, would have been cool if the name were a palindrome or otherwise symmetric but instead, we just saw ‘ART/SON’ everywhere
- they were nice and flexible with a change we had to make in our reservation on the weekend, this is always appreciated
- they handled our friend’s allergy okay; he didn’t develop anaphylactic shock so that was good
- there was certainly enough food in the 8-course tasting menu we got; I wish there was a written version of the menu because sometimes it was hard to understand our waiter, but here’s my general memory, please pardon any errors
- amuse bouche with hazelnut butter and roe
- bread and lovely butter (we got cautioned to ‘take it easy with the bread because there’s a lot to come’)
- cheese wrapped in cheese whey?
- fish and mousse/yogurt infused with hay and red onion crisp
- ceviche-like dish
- mussels on leek and foam
- yummy potato chips and leek foam
- cod with a lobster sauce, lardo
- beef tenderloin, ‘horseradish snow’, celeriac
- pre-dessert with whey sorbet
- grilled pineapple on sorbet
- fudge and frozen yogurt?
- sweet treats – marshmallow, caramel, and delicious sour fruit
- there seemed to be a lot of use of local ingredients, similar to what we got at some of the other restaurants we went to in Iceland; beef, celeriac, lots of fish
- I liked how they used one ingredient in multiple ways – we got one dish with both pickled red onion and a red onion crisp
- the plating job was lovely
- it’s nice that they had cocktails; I enjoyed my ‘Burnt Orange’ though it bothered me that the glass was sticky
- unfortunately, our water glasses went unfilled on several occasions, though to be fair, my husband drinks a ton of water with meals
- things dragged on at the end
Check out their website.
Clover Eats! 