Atlantica - Iceland Review

It is perhaps the first thing that meets you as
you disembark the Flybus at BSÍ: the strange
scent of singed and boiled sheep’s head mixed
together with the more familiar fragrance of deep
fried fare. BSÍ is not only Iceland’s transportation
hub for national coach travel, it also houses Fljótt
og Gott (Fast and Good), a cafeteria that specializes
in quintessential national dishes such as sheep’s
head, fish pudding (plokkfiskur), fish balls (fiskibollur),
meat stew, lamb cutlets and, of course, hamburgers
and French fries. However, you might just
be too excited or exhausted from travel to bother
to stop and ponder the aromas let alone sit down
for a bite to eat, in which case you risk hurrying by
a legendary establishment with a false sense of
having been there and done that.
Although BSÍ has long housed dining facilities
of some kind, father and daughter team, Bjarni
Geir Alfredsson and Katrín Ösp Bjarnadóttir, took
over the place in 1996 when they founded Fljótt
og Gott. While his daughter manages the place,
Alfredsson is the head chef. Alfredsson (b.1951)
began his cooking career at the age of thirteen
in the kitchen of a fishing boat, and has been
working in the restaurant industry since 1969. He
explains how BSÍ’s dining hall has served traditional
Icelandic food for fifty years and he plans to
keep it that way despite continual changes in local
culinary practices: “Icelandic restaurants changed
between 1970-80 as we began importing different
ingredients and looking more abroad. For example,
in the late 70s, I opened up a restaurant in the
French style in Kópavogur and we served steaks
with pepper sauce and wine, but then these kinds
of cutting-edge restaurants started popping up
all over the place…But as one ages, one begins to
long for the food one grew up on, and so I started
serving sheep’s head here, and people laughed
at first.” However, fewer people laugh nowadays,
especially as a return focus on local ingredients
and traditions has become the new cutting-edge
trend.
Still, Alfredsson distinguishes his traditional fare
from the “New Nordic Food” currently pioneered
by higher-end trend setters such as the Nordic
House’s Dill restaurant, and he admits his version is
more in the vein of home-style cooking. To be sure,
the atmosphere in Fljótt og Gott is unapologetically
dated yet invitingly unpretentious, more like
a cult classic than a new hit sensation. In addition
to the daily special and the hot buffet, there is a
salad bar which includes at least three kinds of
herring salad, and a cooler filled with Danish-style,
open-faced sandwiches on rye while the heads of
sheep—served on plastic-wrapped plates alongside
two individual scoops of potato and turnip
mash—are sprinkled throughout this variegated
food arrangement like trophies in a glass cabinet.
It is a stunning presentation that brings to life pictures
out of cookbooks from the 1950s.
Like any cult classic, Fljótt og Gott has its cult
following. Although it attracts both tourists and
locals, Alfredsson claims that the larger share of
his customers are Icelanders—“a peculiar bunch”,
as he affectionately describes his regulars. “Those
who we might consider different, they flock here,
and it may well be because I’m so strange myself.
But I like these people, they always speak their
mind; if the food is not up to par, I get to hear
about it.” It is for the sake of his regulars that
Alfredsson maintains the same weekly specials.
For example, there is always salted lamb and split
peas (saltkjöt og baunir) on Wednesdays and a rack
of pork (grísahryggur) on Sundays. The sheep’s
head (svid or kjammi) is available daily and it
stands as the second most popular traditional dish
on the menu, after lamb cutlets (kótilettur): “I sell
between nine and ten thousand servings of head
per year,” estimates.
While it’s the traditional menu of Fljótt og Gott
that particularly attracts tourists and an older
generation of Icelanders, Alfredsson worries about
the younger generation, who hardly go in for the
fish and potatoes or kjammi unless on a wager.
“They generally eat with one hand, while the other
hand is holding a phone or working a computer,
and food is prepared for them accordingly; a slice
of pizza, a hamburger, a sandwich.” Fljótt og Gott
concedes to the younger demand for hamburgers,
pizza and French fries, which are also made available
at a drive-through window. It may sound like
a strange twist of fate, but according to Alfredsson,
Christmas day is by far the busiest day of the year
at the drive-through window: “The children sit at
home in front of all that traditional food out of
politeness, but they don’t like it, and so we open
the drive-through window and sell pizzas and
hamburgers non-stop, all day long.”
In order to encourage people, not least young
people, to eat local and traditional food, Alfredsson
is presently opening a new store or deli in the centre
of Reykjavík, where he aims to make his fare
more readily available and affordable. “The store
will be called Mamma Steina Matbúd after my
mother who was named Steinunn and had a great
appreciation for food.” In addition to the familiar
ready-made fish and lamb dishes and various
sandwiches of Fljótt og Gott, Mamma Steina will
also sell food products that come direct from the
farmer, such as “meat preserves (sultur), salted cod
from Hauganes, smoked trout from Mývatn, and a
new kind of sheep’s head that has never been sold
on the market before, smoked sheep’s head.” So if
you missed your stop for Icelandic home-cooking
at BSÍ, there is no need to fret for Mamma Steina is
just around the corner at no. 23 Skólavördustígur.
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