The 23 Best Places to Eat and Drink in Iceland

You ring a brass lion's-head doorbell to get in, which sets the tone. ÓX is a 17-seat tasting counter in Reykjavík where a four-hour dinner unfolds inside what feels like two grandmothers' homes colliding: a retro cocktail bar and a kitchen hung with upcycled cupboards. The cooking leans into intensity over prettiness, Icelandic ingredients pushed hard for flavour rather than dressed up for Instagram. It holds a Michelin star.

The drive in sets the tone: black lava fields, no trees, no signs of life except moss and the occasional wisp of geothermal steam. Inside the Retreat at the Blue Lagoon, Moss is a tasting-menu restaurant where the kitchen leans hard into what Iceland actually grows, catches, and pulls from the sea. A Michelin star here, which feels earned by geography alone, but the cooking does its own arguing.

The spiral staircase delivers you straight into the open kitchen, where the chefs greet you before you've even found your seat. This is a Michelin-starred creative restaurant built around Icelandic ingredients and a genuine commitment to sustainability, though the team wears that lightly. The cooking is quiet and precise rather than theatrical, coaxing something unexpected from simple, local produce. Reykjavík's more serious dining room.

An influential Icelandic food writer's cookbook gave this restaurant its name and its guiding idea: take traditional recipes, treat them seriously, and let the local ingredients do the talking. The room is industrial with enough whimsical glassware and art to keep it from taking itself too seriously. A set menu comes out of the open kitchen, built around Icelandic lamb, seafood, and foraged ingredients that most visitors fly over without knowing exist.

A brass lion knocker on Laugavegur 55 answers your entry question: press its tongue and you're into a speakeasy tricked out like a 1960s living room, brown and beige, with kitsch paintings on textured wallpaper and old talk shows murmuring on the TV. The name means "grandmother is the boss" in Icelandic, which tells you everything about the vibe: warm, slightly chaotic, deeply un-flashy. The 50 gave it a Discovery nod.

A single-storey building wedged between two larger ones, with a name that translates as "small room" and a weekly menu of maybe five things, give or take. This cozy modern restaurant in Reykjavík keeps it tight on purpose: a couple of starters, three mains, whatever the market brought in that morning. The owners seem to know everyone by name, and after one visit you'll understand why the regulars never seem to leave.

The tiramisu gets spooned tableside, Italian style, which tells you something about the mood at this Italian restaurant near the Reykjavík harbour. The open kitchen puts the cooks on display, the service is warm, and the menu runs from in-house pasta to a five-course set option if you'd rather let the kitchen decide. The focaccia with whipped ricotta makes a strong case for arriving hungry. There's a cinema next door, in case dinner wasn't enough.

A cocktail bar and kitchen on Hverfisgata where the menu marries Italian pasta-making with Japanese technique, so you might find lobster cappelletti brightened with yuzu kosho sitting next to a chicken skewer that smells like a yakitori stand. The signature dessert arrives looking uncannily like a whole lemon, which is the kind of trick that lands better than it sounds. For solo diners happy to commit, a Kaiseki tasting course with wine pairing runs the full show.

An exposed charcoal grill sends smoke through this lively Middle Eastern brasserie on Reykjavik's main drag, where Icelandic ingredients get rerouted through North African and Lebanese kitchens. Concrete walls, burnished leather banquettes, and meze sharing menus give the whole thing a confident night-out energy. Walk-ins can try their luck at the counter, which is half the fun anyway.

The floor-to-ceiling windows frame the harbour on one side and Harpa Concert Hall on the other, which is a lot to compete with. This sleek hotel restaurant inside the Reykjavík EDITION takes it in stride, running unfussy breakfasts and lunches before pivoting to an evening tasting menu built around Icelandic produce, with an à la carte that swings from lobster ravioli to a Josper-grilled Uruguayan ribeye without much apology.

Wood-fired Neapolitan pizza in the middle of Reykjavík is not something you see coming. This casual pizza spot in the city center imports San Marzano tomatoes and fiordilatte mozzarella, then finishes the pies in a wood-fired oven that gives the crust the char and puff you'd expect somewhere closer to Naples. The room runs young and loud, the kind of place where you don't linger, you just eat well and head back into the cold.