The name comes from a famous Icelandic cookbook published in 1947. The premise is disarmingly simple: take the recipes from that book — traditional Icelandic dishes that have defined the country's culinary identity for generations — and cook them with contemporary skill, local integrity, and a family's love. What emerges is one of the most emotionally resonant dining experiences in the Nordic world.
Matur og Drykkur (Food and Drink) occupies a former salt fish factory on the Grandi harbour in west Reykjavik. The building's industrial bones are part of the experience — bare concrete, warm lighting, and harbour views through large windows create a setting that feels simultaneously raw and refined. Entirely appropriate for a restaurant bridging Iceland's working past with its culinary present.
The ten-course tasting menu changes with Iceland's seasons. Chefs forage wild herbs and seaweed from the surrounding landscape and collaborate with local farmers who raise animals according to traditional methods. The result is a menu that traces Iceland's agricultural and fishing calendar with a food historian's precision and a fine-dining kitchen's skill. Rye bread ice cream — a signature dish that has appeared on countless most-memorable lists — demonstrates the creative ambition at work: familiar, nostalgic, and completely unexpected.
Salt cod, the food that sustained Iceland through centuries of hardship, is treated here as the luxury ingredient it always deserved to be. Preparations are inventive without being theatrical — the goal is always to reveal something true about the ingredient rather than to demonstrate technique for its own sake. This is a restaurant with intellectual honesty as its guiding principle.
The Michelin Guide recognises Matur og Drykkur as one of Reykjavik's essential dining destinations — an affirmation of what local diners have known for years: that a family-run restaurant on a working harbour, serving traditional recipes with modern skill, can represent the highest form of culinary expression.