Best Birthday Restaurants in Reykjavik: 2026 Guide

Iceland's first Michelin star, now two — Gunnar Karl Gíslason's eighteen-seat New Nordic tasting room. Fly in for it once.

Gunnar Karl Gíslason opened Dill in 2009 in a small ground-floor space on Hverfisgata, and earned Iceland's first-ever Michelin star in the 2017 Nordic Guide. The 2024 Guide awarded the kitchen a second star — Iceland's only two-star restaurant and the northernmost two-star in the world. The dining room has eighteen seats across six tables, with the open kitchen visible behind a long marble counter. Gíslason was previously co-author of "North: The New Nordic Cuisine of Iceland" with Jody Eddy in 2014.

The tasting menu runs across thirteen courses at 27,500 ISK (about €185), with optional wine pairing at 19,500 ISK (€130). The course built from cured arctic char with skyr and dill oil is the menu's opening signature; the reindeer tartare with juniper and Icelandic gin is the meal's defining meat course. The wine programme is unusual — short by tasting-menu standards (140 labels) but exceptionally biased toward Nordic producers, with twelve Danish fruit wines and seventeen Swedish craft producers among them.

For a birthday dinner Dill is the Reykjavik booking and the conversation ends there. The three-hour pacing, the small room, and the kitchen's confidence in serving thirteen courses of unfamiliar Icelandic produce make it the most memorable dinner in the country. Book six weeks ahead.

The Blue Lagoon Retreat's Michelin-starred kitchen — a lava-bed dining room forty-five minutes from the city and the most cinematic Icelandic birthday in winter.

Moss opened with the Retreat at Blue Lagoon in 2018 — the luxury sister property to the original geothermal lagoon, set into the moss-covered lava field forty-five minutes from central Reykjavik. The Michelin Guide awarded a star in 2024 under chef Gunnar Geir Gústafsson, who previously cooked at Vox in Reykjavik. The dining room is glass-walled on three sides, looking directly into the lava field through eight-foot windows.

The tasting menu is six courses at 22,800 ISK (about €155), built around Icelandic producers across the entire island — arctic char from Skaftafell, lamb from Skagafjörður, langoustine from the Vestmannaeyjar islands. The cured langoustine with smoked skyr and arctic thyme is the kitchen's most-photographed plate. Wine pairing at 16,500 ISK (€110) across five wines, including one Champagne, one German Riesling, and three biodynamic producers. List 180 labels.

For a birthday dinner in winter — when the snow is falling and the lava field looks like another planet — Moss is the most cinematic Icelandic dinner ever offered. The kitchen pairs with a pre-dinner private spa hour at the Retreat for guests staying the night. Five weeks lead time on weekends.

Þráinn Vigfússon's eleven-seat chef's counter — Iceland's most personal Michelin star and the country's only true counter-format tasting room.

Þráinn Vigfússon opened Óx behind the Sumac dining room on Laugavegur in 2021 as a separate eleven-seat counter restaurant. The Michelin Guide awarded a star in 2022 — the youngest Icelandic kitchen to ever earn the recognition. The format is one sitting per night, all guests arriving at 19:00, the entire meal cooked across the open counter by Vigfússon and one sous chef in front of the eleven seats.

The tasting runs sixteen courses at 28,000 ISK (about €190), and the menu changes weekly. The smoked arctic char with horseradish snow is the kitchen's reference plate; the reindeer course — typically a tartare and a roast — arrives as the meal's centre point around the eighth course. Wine pairing at 21,000 ISK (€140) across seven Nordic and biodynamic European wines. The room is silent except for Vigfússon's commentary on each plate — a delivery style closer to a Tokyo omakase than to any European tasting menu.

For a birthday dinner of two to six where the meal itself is the entire evening — three hours, one sitting, no rotating servers — Óx is the most concentrated dining experience in Iceland. Book seven weeks ahead for any Friday-Saturday.

Hverfisgata's Italian-Icelandic dining bar — Þráinn Vigfússon's casual sibling to Óx and the city's smartest birthday-with-friends booking.

Mat Bar opened on Hverfisgata in 2017 as Þráinn Vigfússon's more casual project — Italian technique applied to Icelandic produce, in a tightly-designed dining bar with sixty seats across an open kitchen and two dining tiers. The kitchen earned a Michelin Bib Gourmand in 2022 and has held it through three consecutive Nordic Guides. The room is loud at peak, lit by hanging brass pendants over the bar, with Roberto Cuesta running pastry as a separate station behind the counter.

The ragù di renna — a slow-cooked reindeer ragù over hand-cut pappardelle — is the menu's defining plate and the dish Mat Bar is named for around Reykjavik. The crudo di trota — Icelandic trout crudo with citrus and fermented Icelandic ramson — is the menu's opening signature. Wine list 110 labels with a smart Italian-Nordic split and an unusual depth of natural wines from Etna and Friuli at €38-€55 bottles.

For a birthday dinner with six to twelve guests where the energy of the room matters and a full tasting menu is too formal, Mat Bar is the smartest booking in the city. The communal high-tops at the centre of the room seat ten and can be reserved as a single party. Three weeks lead time.

The Grillmarket — sixteen years of consistent Icelandic open-fire cooking and the city's most reliable birthday booking for groups of eight to twenty.

Grillmarkaðurinn — "the Grillmarket" — opened on Lækjargata in 2010 under chefs Hrefna Sætran and Guðlaugur Frímannsson, and has been Reykjavik's most consistent open-fire kitchen for sixteen years. The room runs across two floors with an open wood-fire grill at the centre of the ground floor. The kitchen sources ninety percent of its produce from Icelandic farms within 200 kilometres — the kind of granular sourcing the country now expects from any serious restaurant.

The mini-burger flight — three sliders of beef, lamb, and minke whale — is the kitchen's opening table course, designed for sharing across a birthday group. The Icelandic lamb rack from Skagafjörður, grilled over Icelandic birch wood, is the meal's most-ordered centre cut at 9,400 ISK (about €63). Wine list 320 labels with serious Champagne depth (Krug and Salon on the reserve list) and an unusually deep Aglianico section for a Nordic restaurant.

For a birthday dinner with ten to twenty guests where the open-fire theatrics matter and the food spans Icelandic specialities (lamb, char, minke whale, langoustine) without becoming a regional lecture, Grillmarkaðurinn is the city's most reliable group booking. The Bjarmaland private room upstairs seats twenty-six at one long table.

The Old Harbour harbour-house — fifteen years of consistent Icelandic seafood and the most photogenic birthday dining room on the water.

Kopar opened in the historic Old Harbour in 2012 in a restored 1925 harbour-house that was originally a herring-processing facility. The dining room is sixty seats with a forty-foot window facing directly onto the harbour and the boats. Chef Ylfa Helgadóttir runs the kitchen and built the menu around the daily catch from Faxaflói Bay, sourced from the harbour itself.

The crudo of arctic char with skyr and Icelandic black salt is the menu's opening signature. The grilled cod with brown butter and capers is the meal's centre plate at 6,800 ISK (about €46) — Atlantic cod cooked to a register only Icelandic kitchens reliably achieve. The langoustine soup with cream and brandy is the city's reference version of an Icelandic restaurant staple. Wine list 160 labels with unusual depth on Loire and Mosel — light wines that pair the kitchen's coastal register.

For a birthday dinner in summer when the midnight sun is up — June through mid-August, when the harbour is lit at 22:30 — Kopar's window tables are the most photographed dining seats in the city. Book the corner table by the window six weeks ahead in summer.

Iceland's most surprising kitchen — Levantine cooking from Þráinn Vigfússon's third Reykjavik room, the Bib Gourmand sibling to Óx.

Sumac opened on Laugavegur in 2017 — the third Reykjavik restaurant under Þráinn Vigfússon's group, this one applying Lebanese and Levantine technique to Icelandic produce. The Michelin Guide awarded a Bib Gourmand in 2019 and has held it through six consecutive editions. The dining room is fifty-six seats with an open kitchen along the back wall, candlelit, with thin communal tables down the centre and banquettes along the side.

The flatbreads from the wood-fired taboon at the back of the kitchen — baked to order, served with za'atar, hummus, labneh, and muhammara — are the table's opening course. The grilled Icelandic lamb shoulder with pomegranate and sumac is the meal's centre course; the slow-cooked Icelandic goat shoulder, on the menu only October-March, is the rare-protein order for any guest who has had enough lamb. Wine list 95 labels with deep Lebanese and Israeli representation (Massaya, Domaine Wardy, Yatir) at €36-€55.

For a birthday dinner where the table has eaten serious Icelandic cooking for two nights running and wants the conversational variety, Sumac is the only Reykjavik room that meets the brief without leaving the city. Three weeks lead time.