Reykjavik Stories and Tips

Eldsmidjan Pizza Place

Volcano pizza Photo, Reykjavik, Iceland

We had spent the whole day driving around the delights of the Golden Circle. Due to a hire car breakdown and a long wait to be rescued, we didn't arrive back in Reykjavik until 10:30 at night - it was still bright daylight, so this helped the situation!

We were so hungry, but there was nowhere to eat on the entire return journey from Gullfoss waterfall, when we got back to the city, this was the only restaurant in the vicinity of our apartment which was still open. We noticed this oddity early on in our stay, lots of restaurants in Reykjavik seemed to be closed by 9pm.

My husband spotted Eldsmidjan, there was no other option, so we went inside. It would definitely not have been my choice and had there been any other alternative, I would have gone there. It just shows, you should never judge the book by the cover! The restaurant didn't look bad, it just looked a bit bland and dull.

We were the only people in the place dining. There was one other person who was ordering a takeaway pizza. It was fairly bright inside, quiet and not a lot of atmosphere. We sat down, several members of staff walked past on numerous occasions without taking our order. We eventually had to grab someone and tell them we wanted food!

We ordered drinks and pizzas and awaited eagerly the food! The menu was actually very good. They had lots and lots of pizzas, some had combinations of ingredients that were very unusual and sounded really interesting. The pizzas came in 3 sizes with 16 inch being the largest. There were also salads on the menu and a wide selection of drinks.

We discovered, after about 20 minutes and having to actually go into the kitchen to get a member of staff, that the drinks were serve yourself. No-one thought to tell us that. The soft drinks also had unlimited refills, again no-one thought to tell us and it was not written down anywhere. We only had 1 drink each so we felt a bit short-changed in this area.

The pizzas came through at different times. My husband got his seafood pizza first. It was very good - piled high with different types of fish/seafood and he gave it a big thumbs up. When he was almost finished, my pizza appeared. I had chosen one called a Volcano Pizza. It looked just like a volcano - amazing, so creative and fun. It was also delicious. The filling was spicy, tasty and full of flavour. The base was crispy, thin crust and definitely one of the best pizzas I have ever had.

Our son was desperate for his pizza - they served his small margarita last of all! He devoured it in a few gulps and am not too sure he even tasted most of it!

The pizzas are oven baked, apparently the oven was made in Milan. They are truly delicious and it is almost worth the really bad service, you get such a great pizza in the end!

Food and drinks are extremely reasonably priced - this was the cheapest (but also one of the tastiest) meals we had in Iceland. It is just a shame this small, family-run place don't improve the service and customer focus. If they did, the restaurant would be unbeatable.

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