The "Skyrfabrik" in Hveragerði
Update:
Unfortunately, the restaurant "Skyrgerðin" is now closed and part of the property has probably been sold in 2022.
Here is the report from January 2019:
May contain traces of advertising.* We're staying "in the country" for a few more days in a holiday home near Hveragerði, and since we had already heard a lot of good things about the Skyrgerðin restaurant, we went there for dinner last night at the invitation of the house.
The Mjólkurbú Ölfusinga and the new Þinghús, so to speak the town's community center, were built in 1930 by the Icelandic architect Guðjón Samúelsson (1887 - 1950), who from 1920 was known as "húsameistari ríksins", i.e. "state architect", many of the best known Buildings in Iceland designed, among many other buildings, the Hótel Borg in Reykjavík, the National Theater, the old pharmacy in Austurstræti, where the Apótek restaurant is now located, the swimming pool in Barónsstígur - but also the church in Akureyri and probably the most famous church Iceland, the Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík.
In the picture here in the entrance area of Skyrgerðin you can see old photos of the house.
From the very beginning, the building of today's Skyrgerðin served as a Þinghús, i.e. a village community center, and as a Skyr factory. The dairy was opposite. Since 1947, the former community center has served as a hotel and restaurant; dance and music events took place here, weddings were celebrated and local people met here. The Skyrgerðin has been located in the house since summer 2016, also with a hotel and restaurant and event rooms, where cultural events take place regularly and well-known musicians perform, but there are also lectures and film screenings - and you can sometimes also watch football games here.
"Skyrgerðin" means something like "skyr factory", and the restaurant still makes its own skyr today, according to a traditional old recipe. The milk used comes from the Hvammur farm, the last traditional dairy farm in the Ölfus region.
The traditionally made Skyr ("gamaldags skyr") is much firmer and more sour than today's machine-made Skyr - here's a wrapped packet of Skyr for example. In the past, the solid skyr was not eaten straight, but was used for cooking and baking - or simply mixed with cream and sugar and eaten with fresh berries. Skyrgerðin also offers guided tours of skyr production, including a skyr tasting.
Of course, the café and restaurant also uses its own Skyr for cooking and baking and for mixing drinks at the bar. The Skyr Mojíto is said to be legendary, but we didn't try it ourselves.
The food is freshly prepared in the kitchen, simple but with high quality local ingredients. The organic meat is grilled over the charcoal grill.
We got a table for 6 p.m.
The restaurant is really comfortably furnished and with a lot of attention to every detail.
Especially with the beautiful arches, the rooms look very cozy and inviting!
We were definitely looking forward to our meal!
I really liked the way the water was served in these jugs!
The soup of the day is served here next to the bar, on an extra table, everything arranged very stylishly.
My husband chose the creamy Húmarsúpa as a starter - with a small shot of espresso and a bit of cognac, this soup has a very special flavor component, unusual but extremely delicious! The Norway lobster also completely convinced my husband.
As a starter I had stuffed mushrooms - Icelandic mushrooms stuffed with blue cheese, in a dollop of melted butter, with rocket and a kind of "jam" with rhubarb and red onions. Just the combination of the hot mushrooms with the liquid cheese and the crisp salad and the cold, slightly sweet onion-rhubarb jam was a real poem for me!
For the main course I chose the "fish of the day", served with small Icelandic potatoes, fried broccoli, green beans and sauce. The fish of the day, which came from the fish shop in Hveragerði, was char and was perfectly cooked to perfection, and the sauce was also very tasty.
For the main course, my husband had three lamb chops, grilled over charcoal, with fresh salad, a large baked potato, garlic butter and plenty of Bernaise sauce. The grilled flavor of the chops was really convincing and the meat was wonderfully juicy. The dish is always popular, as our waiter confirmed to us.
After this portion my husband was already extremely full - but dessert still came, namely cake of his choice from the cake counter.
Here the selection included several sweet meringue cakes, the typical Icelandic rhubarb crumble cake with the beautiful name "hjónabandssæla" (= "married happiness"), a chocolate date cake and various fruity skyr cakes. Since skyr is Skyrgerðin's specialty, we both decided on a skyr cake, served with plenty of cream and chocolate sprinkles as well as some fruit.
I decided on this very delicious blueberry skyr cake...
...my husband had a decent slice of skyrtorte with berries, white chocolate and Bismark Brjóstsykur, those typical red and white peppermint candies.
By the way, we had a lot of fun with the guests at the neighboring tables next to us.
A Dutch couple sat at one table and two Austrians at the other. They had obviously all come to Skyrgerðin specifically because of the food and had already eaten here the evening before, so the Dutch woman was able to warmly recommend the blueberry Skyr cake to me. And the Dutch found my husband's pink peppermint skyr cake so visually appealing that they were both happy to try a piece. My husband was very grateful for this, but he had to struggle a bit at the end because the portions were all generous.
The Austrians were also on a culinary tour of discovery in Iceland, discussing different dishes, methods of preparation and ingredients, various restaurants that they had already been to over the past few days or that they still wanted to visit...
It was a nice experience to eat here among other people who are as interested and enthusiastic about Icelandic cuisine as we are!
At a glance (as of January 2020):
The "Skyrgerðin" is open from 11:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., on Fridays and Saturdays until 10:00 p.m.
There is a lunch menu and an evening menu, as well as a children's menu with burgers, fries, chops and fish. Younger guests can also get all dishes from the menu as a children's portion for the equivalent of €8.40.
By the way, the prices on the lunch and dinner menus are the same. At lunchtime there are more small dishes, sandwiches, nachos, etc., and in the evening there are Húmarsúpa and also more meat dishes.
The soup of the day costs around €6.90 as a starter and around €13.50 as a main course with a second helping. The Húmarsúpa costs around €19.30, the stuffed mushrooms around €12. The lamb chops grilled on the charcoal grill cost just under €24.50 for three pieces and around €28 for four chops. The fish of the day costs 3,650 ISK (around €26.60), the baked plokkfiskur costs 2,950 ISK, or around €21.50.
For our 3-course menu we would have had to pay the equivalent of around €50 per person, which is relatively cheap by Icelandic standards, also considering the portions were sometimes very large.
* Legal notice:
Technically speaking, this is advertising because we were invited to dinner. But we only visit restaurants and bars that we have heard good things about and that we find exciting - for a variety of reasons. In that respect, we were honestly thrilled and when we burst out in praise, we really mean it.
[Translated from
here.]
