Mat Bar

The Restaurant

Mat Bar opened in 2019 on Hverfisgata 26, on the central Reykjavík 101 block that runs parallel to Laugavegur and Bankastræti, in a beautifully restored ground-floor space that was previously a printing shop. The dining room — exposed brick, a long polished marble bar at the front, a six-top communal table at the rear, and about thirty-five seats across a series of high-top two- and four-tops — was designed deliberately in dialogue with the Oslo and Copenhagen wine-bar aesthetic, and the format reflects that intention: a short menu of about ten small plates and four hand-cut pastas, a serious aperitivo programme at the bar from 5:30pm, and a wine list of about a hundred low-intervention growers from Italy, France, and the New Nordic producer network. The kitchen seats about thirty-five at peak service; the six-top at the back books three to four weeks ahead in peak summer.

The menu reads as a careful Italian-Nordic programme. Chef Eyþór Rúnarsson — who trained in Copenhagen and northern Italy before opening Mat Bar — cooks a rotating small-plates menu that has included a hand-cut bresaola of Icelandic horse with mustard cress; a hand-pulled langoustine carpaccio with citrus and olive oil; a charcoal-grilled hand-cut focaccia with house-cured lardo; a hand-cut tagliatelle with brown-butter prawn and dill; a hand-cut cacio e pepe with aged sheep's-milk cheese from a single Icelandic producer; a hand-cut tortelli with grass-fed Icelandic lamb and aged cheese; and a hand-cut chocolate-and-rye-tiramisu that closes most tables. The kitchen sources the pasta semolina from a single Italian producer, the cured meats from a small Reykjavík producer, and the fish from whatever the day's North Atlantic boats sent in.

The wine programme is the operational headline and the bar's signature work: about a hundred references with deliberate depth in low-intervention growers from northern Italy (Alto Adige, Friuli, Piemonte), the Loire, the Jura, the Languedoc, and the New Nordic producer network (Sweden, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and the small Icelandic producer that has emerged from the geothermal greenhouse country), plus a careful Champagne and grower-prosecco shelf. The bar runs a serious aperitivo programme from 5:30pm: a rotating set of three to four house cocktails, a Negroni programme that uses a custom-blended Icelandic gin, and a short list of grower Champagne by the glass. Service is direct, fast, and bilingual; the senior captains handle wine pairing recommendations without lecturing, and the kitchen handles dietary modifications and pasta substitutions with care. Mat Bar has appeared in the MICHELIN Guide Nordic Countries selection for Reykjavík and has been a Reykjavík Grapevine and Vínþjónustan award winner. For a first-date or birthday dinner in Reykjavík city centre that signals modern, lively, and wine-serious in equal measure, this is the room.