ELLEN75005,
i am one you can take the advice from. My wife and i traveled to Iceland in late July/early August of 2010. What an incredible trip!!!!! There were so many highlights we were looking forward to, however top on my list was visiting the shark farm where the meat is actually processed. The farm is located on a peninsula north of Reykjavik just east of the Snaefellsnes area. It is called Bjarnarhöfn Farm and is run by the Hildibrandur family. It is the norm to eat a little cube of the meat with a little cave bread and a chaser of brenavin. However when we got there, i was shooting my mouth off on how it was not going to be that bad, that our tour guide gunnar went right to the shed where the meat was hanging and took out his pocket knife and cut me off a HUGE slice and said, ok smart a@# go ahead and eat this. I was like WHOA hold on, however there was no going back. And boy did it ever live up to its reputation. it was horrible. Granted the smell was way worse than the actual taste, but that it not saying much. so i heard that the taste and smell were bad, but what got me was the texture. It was slimy and VERY chewy. So you find yourself having to chew a lot to get it down, which you didn’t want to do with something that tasted this bad. I did get it down and only gagged once, but WHAT an aftertaste!!! Now i know why the normal serving size is a small cube with a lot of brenavin!! When we got into the museum i tried it again the traditional way, still bad but definably more tolerable with the alcohol. My wife REFUSED to eat any of it. Before we were at the farm i had mentioned to people in Iceland that i was going to eat the dreaded shark. Most stated that they do not eat it and the only reason that it is still produced today is for stupid tourist like myself, if that is true i don’t know, but i was the stupid tourist that did eat it!!!


P.S. if you’re looking for 100% foolproof food in Iceland eat the hot dogs!!! I know it sounds weird but you won’t regret it, its Iceland’s “unofficial” food!! Have a great trip!!

Three weeks from today we'll be there and I'm getting a lot of pressure from my husband to eat it :). The texture sounds just awful; chewy's bad enough, but slimy too?

On another food note, a colleague who was there not long ago said that restaurants compete as to who can make the best lobster bisque. Anyone aware of that?

Three weeks from today we'll be there and I'm getting a lot of pressure from my husband to eat it >>

tell him he can eat your portion as well as his own.

we had a lot of soup [usually oxtail or lamb] but never lobster bisque. you'll have to report back on which you thought was the best!

"tell him he can eat your portion as well as his own." LOL! I have to admit that the story value of eating it is weighing on my mind pretty heavily. My one and only chance to say I've eaten rotten shark - how many people can say that (who lived to tell about it)?!

I'll definitely report.

What? You cannot find fresh fish in Iceland? :)

I had enough Mutton (old lamb) soup to last a lifetime while in iceland!

On the other hand Puffin is tasty. We had it as an appetizer -it was served in a (I'm not making this up) puff pastry.

The meat is purple, nearly black and tastes like a cross between dark meat chicken and fish. That sounds awful, but as it turned out it was not bad at all and certainly different.

travel - us too. i don't remember having puffin - but we did eat guillimot. strangely, i have no recollection of how it tasted.

on a more hopeful note, ellen, the coffee is very good, and usually free after the first cup. they just have pots on the side and you are often expected to help yourself.

one place we went [a pub near the very end of the western fjords] the coffee was actually free. however, the oxtail soup was about £10 each.

Hey, did anyone try whale and horse?? They were both on my taste list (puffin was the only thing i didnt get a chance to get.) The horse just kind of tasted like a gamey beef but dry. I thought the whale was nasty! I guess i had thought in my mind is was going to be like eating fish. It actaully looked like steak. However it tasted like kidney/liver, really mineraly!! Not as bad as the Hakarl(fermented shark)

I had whale once at Sloppy Louie's, a restaurant in NYC in the then Fulton Fish Market - a wonderful, one of a kind place before the yuppies found it. I thought the whale steak tasted like veal sauteed in a pan that was just used for a strong tasting fish and not cleaned.

Horse, I had a couple of years ago in Verona, together with pasta with a meat sauce made with donkey meat. I wouldn't order either again.

I think I've eaten horse in France, but wouldn't voluntarily do it again.

so far i've avoided whale.

Well, among other things, Iceland sounds like a culinary adventure! Horse will definitely not be an option for me, but the shark remains to be seen :)

just go for it!