Restaurant Review: Iceland?s Slippurinn Is an Ephemeral Culinary Destination

“It was so warm—15 degrees!” (Or 60 degrees Fahrenheit.)The upshot to Iceland’s temps: It’s always soup weather, and the version of lobster soup, a dish found all around the country, that I slip into at Slippurinn, a Slow Food-principled restaurant overlooking the shipyards, is reason enough to pray for a wet and rainy vacation. It’s outstanding, and it’s not even the best soup Gísli Matthías Auðunsson, Slippurinn’s 30-year-old chef and co-owner, makes.That would be the halibut soup, “a really traditional Icelandic soup that’s almost been forgotten about,” says the chef, who goes by Gísli Matt. Icelanders who live in or come to Haimaey—it’s a popular summer destination—and savvy tourists have about four months each year to taste the ephemeral compositions Matt creates with purebred lamb from the hilltop pastures, pristine seafood from the frosty North Atlantic, and whatever seaweeds, barks, and berries he can forage for in between.Not a lot grows on this volcanic island—by comparison, Denmark, the seat of the Nordic movement, might as well be Provence—but the plants that do manage to root and thrive in the anemic soil and brackish tide pools are of outsized deliciousness. There’s a gorgeous rhubarb cider on the wine list, too, made by Sveinn Steinsson, one of Matt’s former sous chefs from Matur og Drykkur, the acclaimed Reykjavik restaurant he opened in 2015 and sold to his partners the following year.In addition to Slippurinn, Matt also owns Skál!, a Michelin Bib Gourmand award-winning bar in the capital’s first food hall, but his heart remains in the islands: “Slippurinn has, and always will be, my main focus.”The single imperfect dish at Slippurinn is probably the prettiest: thick, flaky steaks of tusk, an Atlantic white fish that looks like a squatty eel, served in skillet of whiskey-whey sauce and festooned like a ceremonial offering with flowering blue beach herbs. It sits on a cloud of whipped skyr, and lest the whole set-up get too sour, toasted oats suspended in caramel ground it with deep stroke of cooked sugar.Matt says these ingredients reference “the nostalgic palate of Icelanders,” and there is no better way to indulge your inner kid, Icelandic or otherwise, than Slippurinn’s secret third dessert, the off-menu hot chocolate.