[Marxism] The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, or....

[S. Artesian]

....
...One man's bankruptcy is another man's terrine of smoked puffin breast 



WSJ online  February7

... there has been nothing frothy about Iceland since the currency, the once high-flying krona, crashed to roughly half its value last fall. Banks were nationalized. Unemployment zoomed. And while I was in Reykjavik, the government fell, after weeks of noisy demonstrations in front of the world's oldest parliament, the Althing. In my hotel around the corner from this small squarish building of black volcanic stone, I had to put on noise-limiting earphones to block out the clash of cymbals, the blare of foghorns and other insistent cacophony from the square below at night. [THE HORROR! THE HORROR! THANK GOD THE HOTEL PROVIDES THE EARPHONES AT NO EXTRA CHARGE]

The money crisis explains why Panorama and Reykjavik's other bubble-spawned luxury restaurants are so sparsely patronized now. Icelanders aren't throwing cash around, and tourists don't flock here to luxuriate in the five hours of faint winter light each day. But for anyone interested in sampling some intelligently cosmopolitan treatments of exotic ingredients, the time is now. [ YES! SEIZE THE TIME. IF YOU WAIT, YOU'RE LATE.  IF YOU'RE SLOW YOU BLOW] Restaurants like Panorama or the very chic Vox in the Hotel Nordica or the marvelous bistro 3 Frakkar are, in effect, on sale for those of us lucky [AND BEING LUCKY IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN BEING GOOD] enough to arrive with dollars. Iceland just a few months ago was arguably the most expensive city in the Western world, with airport cabs costing $140. Now prices have come down, if not to earth, at least to a level competitive with other capitals of developed countries. Just about every boutique on the elegant shopping street Laugavegur had a sale sign in the window. (Utsala, the word for sale and a rare Icelandic-English cognate, was the first Icelandic word I learned.) And Paris and Barcelona don't offer diners cutting-edge preparations of moose, puffin, reindeer and whale. [NO THEY DON'T.  SOMEONE THEY DO SEEM TO DO OK WITH CANARD CONFIT, CREME CATALAN, THOSE FISH SOUPS FROM YOUR EVERYDAY FISH.  BUT SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED A CHANGE, YOU NEED TO TUCK INTO SOME PUFFIN AND WHALE TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF AGAIN].

At the top of the food chain, you can now tie into some paper-thin petals of roseate, pounded moose carpaccio at Sjafarkallarin (Seafood Cellar) or a plateful of langoustine tails lightly tossed in butter. I never thought I would be served too many langoustines, but what seemed like a dozen of the dainty things turned a treat into a trial. The waitress relentlessly pushed overpriced wine on me (all wine in Iceland is overpriced, because of import duties), and I reluctantly concluded that Sjafarkallarin was a kind of pretentious trap.[UNLIKE THE WSJ WEEKEND SECTION DINING REVIEWS...]

Vox might strike some people as even more pretentious, but for me it was a beautiful adaptation of modern culinary principles by executive chef Gunnar Karl Gíslason to local foods. [SEE WHAT I MEAN?]

I started with an elaborate and well-thought-out sauté of puffin cubes with sunchokes and hazelnuts in a cream sauce tinctured with truffle and leek oil. Puffins thrive in such abundance in Iceland that, it is said, you can easily find yourself alone with a million of them on an isolated beach. So guilt would have been irrational as I enjoyed the chef's artful crossruff of textures -- the chewy puffin playing against the more brittle sunchoke and hazelnuts, with an overall sea-saltiness prevailing amid the Gallic refinement of the sauce. The puffin hunter's name, Siggi Hennings, was on the menu.... [BUT HOW CAN YOU BE SURE THAT SIGGI KILLED THEM HIMSELF, AND BY HAND.  MAYBE HE HAS A SLEW OF FORMER BANKERS, CURRENCY TRADERS, WORKING FOR HIM]

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...Icelandic law permits hunters to take only 300 reindeer a year (there are no farmed reindeer in Iceland). So those dark-red cylinders of faintly gamy meat (really more in the line of grass-fed filet mignon) taken at Jökuldals og Fellaheidum says the menu (and who would doubt it?) are the Kobe beef of the North. Vox serves them standing on end, apparently the local style for the same cut of beef.

Vox is the obvious candidate for Iceland's first Michelin star,[AND PERHAPS A HARD-ON-THE-HEELS BANKRUPTCY] according to a proud Vox waiter who recognized me on a flight to London. Iceland is a small place. Before you know it, you start noticing faces you've seen before.[THAT'S BECAUSE THEY ARE THE SAME FACES, WITH A GENETIC HOMOGENY THAT IS ALMOST FRIGHTENING-- AS IF YOU HAD BEEN DROPPED INTO THE FILMING OF CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED]. 

Thrir Frakkar is where you want to go for Icelandic traditional food with a modest nontraditional spin. Chef Úlfar Eysteinsson's puffin is cured and pungent, comes in purple strands, arrayed in a nouvelle starburst. If I could go back tomorrow, I think I would order the horse steak again. Here was meat with personality, plated modestly with potatoes, carrots and turnips. Lean and unforgettable. [UNLIKE THE WRITER WHO IS UNLEAN AND MOST FORGETTABLE]

As was the cunningly Icelandicized dessert, a crème brûlée based on skyr, the mildly sour, ubiquitous soft cheese that will remind first-timers of a thick yogurt. In the crème brûlée, its sourness countered the sweetness of the sugary sheet on top. And that's not all. On the same plate was a big mound of whipped cream and a smear of light custard sauce rippling with red fruit jam -- a dairy symphony. And for a touch of the sunbaked south, Chef Eysteinsson drops an orange Colombian physalis berry (Cape gooseberry) complete with papery ecru leaves, on top of the whipped cream. [BE  STILL MY HEART.  ACTUALLY, IT WILL BE AFTER EATING THAT DAIRY SYMPHONY/DIRGE].

Does this sound too cute for you? Then head down to the harbor in a gale and wander among the docks until you stumble on Saegreifinn (The Sea Count), a shack specializing in putrefied Greenland shark and hardfiskur, fish chips that will permanently perfume your luggage. [PUTRIFIED GREENLAND SHARK? HOW WONDERFUL,  HOW APPROPRIATE FOR THIS CAPITALISM].

They reminded W.H. Auden of toenails. But if you don't get around to buying some from Saegreifinn, and forget to pick up a sheep's head, complete with eye and tongue, at the central-bus-station canteen, the Icelandic deli at the hypermodern airport sells them both along with puffin pâté. [ON MY WAY!]