The Best Hot Dog In Town

One of the reasons I love traveling so much is that it allows me to sample some food that I ordinarily wouldn't be able to eat in my sheltered little world around Washington, D.C. When I first booked my recent trip to Iceland and started hunting around for what new culinary delicacies I might encounter there, I was intrigued. While I had no desire to sample any hakarl (a type of kidney-less shark that has to be fermented for six months before it is edible) or rams' testicles, I thought I might get to try some puffin, some Icelandic lobster or maybe even some whale, although the ethical issues with whale meat might have scared me off. In my wildest imaginings, I had visions of McDonald's serving Puffin McMuffins for breakfast. That's before I knew McDonald's had come and gone to Iceland, apparently scared off by the country going almost bankrupt in 2008.

But between a packed itinerary for that vacation and a lot of other goings on in life, I just didn't see that a lot of research into food in Iceland would pay off much. So while I ended up sampling skyr, Icelandic meat soup, rye bread baked underground using geothermal heat and a bag or two of paprika flavored potato chips, I missed out on puffin, lobster, whale and some foods that would literally make my stomach turn. I regret not spending some time looking into restaurants before arriving since our one excursion to an actual restaurant, Icelandic Fish and Chips, was pretty much as disappointing as you could get.

But despite all that, there was one food experience in Iceland I was determined to NOT miss out on: eating a hot dog on the street. That's right, a street hot dog. Apparently, Icelanders are nuts for hot dogs to the point of it being a bit of a national obsession. And if you are going to have a hot dog in Iceland, you have to do it at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, a hot dog stand located in what looks like a triangular leftover parcel of land a couple of blocks from the harbor in downtown Reykjavik. There are three other locations in the city but the one to go to is the original at Tryggvatagata 1.

It has been reported that greater than 50% of all Icelanders have eaten a hot dog from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, which translates to "the best hot dog in town." How someone came up with this statistic, I have no idea. In August 2006, the British newspaper The Guardian named it the best hot dog stand in Europe, for what that's worth. And if all that weren't enough, apparently Madonna, James Hetfield and Bill Clinton have all stopped by for a bite. With this sort of mythology surrounding it, and having already hit up Tail o' The Pup and Pink's on separate trips to Los Angeles, I knew I had to stop by before we left town.

As luck would have it, we stumbled upon the stand quite by accident on our first day in country after getting off our non-whale watching trip at a time when we were just looking for a snack to tide us over before our jet-lagged bodies gave out and we succumbed to sleep. It was cold and snowy and already really dark at 4 p.m. and either the weather or the hour had scared away the line that everything I had read about this place said we would encounter. Admittedly, two other people showed up right after we got there but when we ordered two hot dogs with everything, we were the only ones there.

Ordering with everything is supposed to be the way to go here so we complied with local custom. Everything in this case means raw onions, fried onions, ketchup, remoulade and sweet Icelandic mustard. About 15 seconds after ordering, I was presented with two hot dogs which looked decidedly not like they had "everything" on them. I had apparently missed the two applications of onions which were concealed below the frank but indeed everything was there. It all happened so fast. Finding the only table there covered with a thin film of snow, we elected to eat standing up.

The hot dogs we ate here were a quick cheap meal that provided a bit of warmth both in terms of the temperature of the food and the feeling that we were doing something uniquely Icelandic and they were very welcome. The taste itself was not as salty as a regular hot dog, either through a lack of salt in the sausage or through being masked by the sweetness of the mustard, which definitely shone through the sauces. There was also something crunchy in the toppings which was either the raw onions, or something in the remoulade. The texture was almost like tiny sushi roe combined with Rice Krispies. Not as sketchy as it sounds.

I've eaten a lot of hot dogs in my life. Possibly too many. And I'm just not sure I have a perfect hot dog. Most hot dogs I've eaten have been microwaved or boiled in my own place and slathered with mustard and sauerkraut. I just haven't had a lot of restaurant dogs. By default, this was without a doubt the best I had in Iceland. I'm not sure it beats Pink's for flavor but the no wait line here vs. the hour and a half wait for a hot dog on a hot Los Angeles May night was definitely better. More than anything else, I feel stopping by here was something that had to be done to feel like I really had been to Iceland and I'm glad we could fit it into what was an extremely packed agenda. I'll go back for another next time I'm in town.

Black Death

Sometimes it seems like half of what I write about in this blog is food and booze. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that. I wouldn't have traveled to Kentucky this past fall if it weren't for bourbon and I wouldn't have had the same memories of Bavaria if I hadn't eaten so many sausages and drank so much beer. And so I think it's appropriate that my recent trip to Iceland gave me a great story involving both food and booze. This post deals with the booze part of that couple; a post covering the food will follow very soon.

Different parts of our globe are often identified with the distilled spirits they produce. At least for me they are; I just can't separate the booze from the geography I guess. When I think Russia, I think vodka. Scotland has Scotch, Kentucky has bourbon, the Caribbean has rum, Mexico has tequila and mezcal and on and on and on. Six months ago, I never would have identified Iceland with a distilled spirit. After having spent about a half a week on that volcanic rock in the Atlantic, now I do. Now when I think Iceland, I think brennivin.

Two shots and a water, as recommended.

Iceland, like a number of other countries, has had an interesting history of temperance and alcohol bans over its history. Just like in the United States, the country experienced a period of prohibition beginning in the early 20th Century. The initial period of prohibition lasted from 1915, when all alcohol was banned (booooooooo!), until 1921, when Spanish refusal to purchase Icelandic fish unless Iceland imported Spanish wines forced the reinstatement of wine as a legal beverage. Way to go, Spain! Woo hoo!

The re-introduction of sprits to Icelandic society was next. A national referendum on prohibition in 1935 allowed the legal sale of distilled beverages in the country for the first time in 20 years and at that point, most of what the temperance movement in Iceland had sought to ban was now legal. This is where brennivin takes off, but I'll come back to that in a paragraph or so.

I guess once wine and spirits were legalized, both the drinkers and the non-drinkers quit arguing for a while, preferring the status quo to continued struggle, because the sale of beer remained banned until 1989. No, that's not a typo. Icelanders lived without legal beer, that most wonderful of all drinks, for an astounding 74 years and two months until March 1, 1989 (now known as Beer Day). Ironically, the straw that broke the camel's back there was the Minister of Justice's 1985 ruling that bars could not add liquor to legal non-alcoholic beer to simulate real beer. I guess the silliness of the whole endeavor was sort of obvious after that.

Here goes nothing. Skal!

Once the ban on spirits was lifted in Iceland, it was time for brennivin to step forward as Iceland's national drink. Brennivin is technically a schnapps, which is a fermented beverage where the base of the alcohol (in this case potatoes) is fermented with the liquor's flavoring as part of the fermentation process, as opposed to being added later. The primary flavor in brennivin is caraway seeds, although there are other herbs and spices in there, most notably cumin and angelica. Sounds yummy, right? 

Folks in Iceland started distilling brennivin as soon as the government of Iceland told them that they could but the packaging was a little bit different than it is today. The current packaging features a mouthwash-green bottle (brennivin itself is clear) with a black label featuring the silhouette of Iceland on it; the original bottle label was also black but it prominently displayed a skull and crossbones label. Both the black color and the ominous label were designed to discourage people from drinking it (clearly not the American version of capitalism). The label had the exact opposite effect to what was intended. Brennivin sold well and it ended up with the nickname "black death" which has stuck to this day. 

After learning about black death, I knew I couldn't leave Iceland without a taste, so on our first night in country, exhausted after an overnight flight which featured about five hours of uneasy sitting up sleeping, I walked into a bar on Laugavegur (Reykjavik's main shopping drag) for a shot (or two). My choice of establishments was Lebowski Bar, which as the name suggests, is dedicated to all-things-dude inspired by the Jeff Bridges movie The Big Lebowski. While I understand there are many folks out there who love this movie, I'm not a Big Lebowski guy so to me it was a bowling themed bar, complete with moving neon bowling balls and pins on the outside and Brunswick plastic laminate bar tops. I got it. But I was there for the brennivin, not the decor.    

Brennivin is kept chilled so it was not visible walking into the bar but I knew they would have it. My request for two shots of brennivin was granted, with a question from the bartender: did I want a glass of water with my brennivin? After asking if I needed one, and being assured by the bartender that he always keeps a glass of water handy when drinking brennivin, I agreed to two shots and a water chaser. Time to taste.

I have to say my expectations were pretty darned low here and they were exceeded mightily. I expected any liquor with a nickname like black death to be awful but I was pleasantly surprised. If I can paint any sort of picture as to the flavor, I'd say it was pretty much like drinking rye bread, a result more of the caraway than anything else; the cumin and other flavorings did not make themselves evident to my weak taste buds. While rye bread flavored alcohol might not sound that thrilling, I was really OK with it. I can think of way worse things to drink. And brennivin is 75 proof so its relatively low alcohol content makes it really drinkable with no burn going down the throat. I'm sure I could down a lot of this in a night in Reykjavik if I needed to prove my worth to Icelanders. And I did not need the chaser. After my two shots were down, I left the water as poured on the bar and walked back into the dark and cold, ready to return to my hotel confident I'd crossed one of the essential experiences off my Iceland list.

Oh, and they sell this stuff really cheap at the airport. I have a half liter chilling in my fridge as I write this. Come over and taste it with me if you are ever close by. Skal!

I like to stop at the duty free shop. At least I do in Iceland when there's brennivin to bring back!

The House Always Wins

OK, so let's get this out there right away: I didn't see the Aurora Borealis while I was in Iceland this past week. My $2,000 gamble didn't pay off. I'll have to try again some other time. And no doubt I will someday, whether it be in Iceland or somewhere else. I'll get to see the Northern Lights eventually, even if I have to station myself somewhere for a month or so and do nothing else but look at the sky every evening. But that's a long way away in all likelihood.

I usually do a fairly good job of setting my expectations at a realistic level for something like finding the Northern Lights where there are so many variables in play which are totally out of my control: the right solar conditions, the right temperature and clear skies are definitely conditions which I cannot even influence in any way. And so when I boarded my flight at Dulles Airport Tuesday night I was prepared for failure and the disappointment that would bring. I knew picking such a short window of time meant everything would have to fall into place perfectly.

My itinerary for this trip included only a three night stay and I knew the first night was probably a loss because I would surely just pass out early that day due to the lack of sleep on the overnight flight Tuesday evening. But Wednesday's activities brought a glimmer of hope. I took a whale watching trip that day just after noon (or since we didn't see any whales, it was basically just a boat trip). While looking hopelessly at the Atlantic Ocean for anything resembling a whale, we met Steve from the Isle of Sheppey in England and his wife, Anna, from Belarus (by Steve's own admission a total eastern European mail order bride scenario but it worked out - they just celebrated their tenth anniversary).

Steve and Anna had seen the Aurora Borealis two nights before just outside of Reykjavik. I had a chance between not seeing whales to check out the pictures Steve had taken and hope that I would have a chance to capture some similar images. The Northern Lights usually appear in pictures as mostly green and yellow waves of particles across the sky and Steve's pictures looked substantially similar to those posted on Northern Lights tour websites. But his account of seeing the Lights in person differed from his photographs. While his pictures showed a lot of green in the sky, he described only white lights, explaining that he was told to take photographs using an eight second exposure on his camera which would produce the signature colors of the Lights. I never really thought those photographs were taken as anything more than a single quick shutter click, but I'll surely remember Steve's story if I ever do get to experience it myself. I went to bed that night cautiously optimistic. I kept the curtains in my room open just in case the sky lit up in the night (it didn't).

Special Tours: Not so special last Thursday night.

The first thing I did the next morning when I got up was to check the Aurora Forecast on the Icelandic Meteorological Office's webpage. While not ideal, the forecast showed the possibility of some clear skies later that evening just west of Reykjavik, meaning over the ocean. Fortunately, I had scheduled a night Northern Lights by Boat tour that night as part of my vacation package so maybe there would be some hope. I set out on a most of the day bus tour to Iceland's Golden Circle with my fingers crossed that I'd get a break that night.

The Golden Circle is composed of three natural sites: Lake Thingvellir, a site of historical and geological importance to the Icelanders; Gullfoss, a 100 foot high waterfall; and Geysir, one of the first geysers ever to be discovered (and the namesake for all those that followed). The scenery was incredible but the tour got back a little late, so we took a cab downtown to get some dinner in plenty of time to catch our boat. Excitedly, we asked the cab driver if she thought we would see the Northern Lights on our tour. The answer was a flat "no, it's not cold enough." And if that didn't dash my hopes enough, they were killed when we got to the very imaginatively named "Special Tours" company office and found out the tour had been cancelled due to windy conditions. Better safe than sorry I guess but there went one of my two chances.

Gazing hopelessly up at the Iceland sky Friday night.

So then it was down to Friday, my last day in Iceland and my last shot at the Aurora Borealis. Friday gave me the best shot at a spectacular sighting because I planned to get out of Reykjavik and away from the city's light pollution. But after a long drive out of town, a few hours strolling around a glacier and a quick traditional Icelandic meal, our tour guides declared the sky too cloudy and there was no way would see the Lights that night. Strike three. I was out. No Northern Lights. Not on this trip.

I'm glad I went to Iceland, even if the primary reason for me going never panned out. The country is beautiful and I'm glad my introduction to the place occurred in mid-December. I really did keep the hotel room curtains open all three nights I was in country in hopes that I would wake up at some point in the night to a fantastic light show. It never happened and my disappointment was honestly almost palpable. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am committed to try again. It may not be soon and it may not be in Iceland but I'll be back to look up at the night sky again someday.

Iceland's night sky, Friday December 13, 2013. Yes, this is a real photograph.