Reflective of the season, I was welcomed to Jump with an Icelandic take on mulled wine and sat to listen to some similarly season suited acoustic music from Ceastone and Axel Flóvent. I know Hygge is mainly a Danish thing, but….absolute Hygee.

Sitting down to dinner with the First Lady of Iceland, Eliza Reid, and businessmen from Icelandair, I learn all about the Icelandic Winter. As the topic turns to how well the national team performed in the 2016 Euros, our delicious starter of Atlantic Char with roe arrived, and I remembered why dill is my new favourite herb.

Experiencing culture with my tastebuds has always been a must for me, and I absolutely reveled in the gloriousness of the fish in Icelandic cuisine, as a second course comprised of cod and cauliflower with a hazelnut vinaigrette arrived.

Lamb is probably my least favourite meat but is an Icelandic classic, and I have to say the peppery seasoning, careful cooking and kale and crowberry sauce, actually made the third dish of the evening an absolute delight.

I remember from last year’s Taste of Iceland meal at Luma  that skyr, an Icelandic breakfast yogurt, was an absolute delight, so I was pleased to see it on the menu again at jump. Perhaps time makes the heart grow fonder; this year’s skyr dish, a white chocolate brownie with a skyr ganache, was even better than last year’s offering. Someone tell me where I can get skyr this good in Toronto, please!

All in all, the combination of excellent food, interesting conversation, beautiful music, delicious cocktails and carefully selected wines made for a glorious banquet indeed. Skál!

Check out the organizers website for more info and keep up to date with future events.

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Trotting along to Luma, where chef Ylfa Helgadottir is taking up residency for the festival, I had no idea the level of Icelandic food joy that was waiting for me!

Welcomed with a cocktail, I was surrounded with the most delightful company; a member of the festival organization team, a few lovely food bloggers and one of Iceland Air’s top marketers. My cocktail may have been deliciously bitter, but the conversation was far from it.

We cooed suitably over the beautiful presented Icelandic cod, served with seaweed salad, dill mayo and salmon roe. Of course we cooed harder when we took our fast bite; the cod was subtly salty and the slight crunch that came from the roe made the dish texture rich. Yum. My Icelandic dinner table friend informed me this was quite a traditional method of cooking fish, which was reiterated by the chef as she told us the fish is rested on salt, put into water to draw it out then cooked at 51 degrees Celsius for 17 minutes. Tada.

The cooing crescendoed as we were served up our second dish; Langoustine risotto with fennel salad and shellfish sauce. The risotto was both delicious and perfectly cooked but what rested on top of it was the real draw; fine lobster tail and shrimp. I was in seafood heaven.

As the white wines (two delicious chardonnays) were switched to a red (a shiraz mourvèdre) for our next dish, I took a gulp for encouragement. You see, whilst I am a big foodie, I have never been able to enjoy lamb. I just don’t like it. That said, our third dish of the evening, Icelandic lamb with potatoes, creamed mushrooms, parsnip and a port and garlic confit, was very nicely done. The creamed mushrooms, confit and parsnip were glorious when combined and I even enjoyed a few small pieces of perfectly tender lamb. I usually find the taste of lamb meat just too overpowering but here it was slightly more subtle and manageable. Everyone else around me was in meat heaven and even I daresay I enjoyed more than any lamb I have tasted it so it must have been good.

I love a good desert wine and found the riesling we were served to be most satisfactory when coupled with our lovely fourth and final dish. Skyr is a popular breakfast item in Iceland but here the chef had played with traditional notions, instead presenting it as part of a dessert. Skyr sorbet accompanied caramel cream cheese mousse, caramelized white chocolate chunks and raspberries. WOW. I was pretty full by this point but the dessert was not too heavy and I found the sharpness of the raspberries and the slight sourness to the Skyr went perfectly with the white chocolate and the mousse. Yum, yum, yum.

If this is truly a taste of Iceland, then I guess I have a flight to catch asap!

Taste of Iceland ran from 12-15^th November, but if you missed it, it will be back next year!

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