In all my travel blog postings, I have never lead off a trip with a food posting. I’m making an exception because the food here was so good.

We started our trip to Iceland just off the southern coast of the mainland with an excursion to the Westman Islands and the island of Heimaey. We stayed at the Vestmannaeyjar Hotel. On the first floor of our hotel was this restaurant that is attached to the hotel, while still being an independent restaurant. As we sat in the waiting area for all of our group to come down from their rooms, the restaurant’s chef/owner stopped by to chat with us. His name was Einer Bjorn Arnason. He chatted about Heimaey and asked us where we were from and eventually asked us if we had heard about the recent success of the Iceland soccer team. He was pleased that we had heard about them and told us that he had a personal stake in the team since he was the team chef.

We had our first dinner in this restaurant and our first lunch the next day. Einer came to our table at some point during each course of both meals. Sometimes he served us a dish and other times he came by during or after a course and each time, he engaged us about the food and other things. These two meals were a great start to our Iceland adventure.

Our first course for dinner was lobster soup. It was not a bisque or chowder but lobster soup. To steal a line from Rene Zellweger, "He had me at the first spoonful of soup". It was absolutely delicious. We asked the waitress what was in it and she said it was a secret, but she did tell us that the whitish stuff floating on top was white chocolate. I avoided the chocolate on my first sip and the only ingredient I could determine was some nutmeg. WOW! It was excellent!

It annoys me to hear people say things like their meat "melted in their mouth". But honestly, the lamb served as our main course for dinner came pretty darn close to melting in our mouths. It was really excellent. We also had beef with mushrooms, potatoes, kale, carrots, and onions.

Dessert was lava cake and vanilla ice cream. It was an excellent finish to a great meal...and the lava cake is a perfect dessert for Heimaey, as you will learn soon enough.

Chef Einar Bjorn Arnason delivered my lunch entre personally. He told us about the cod and how he prepared it. I asked for a photo and started to get up but he said to stay seated and he got down for this photo.

My lunch entre was fresh cod over mashed potatoes with bacon crumbles on top and rye bread crumbles around the bottom.

After eating two meals in his restaurant, it doesn’t surprise me that their soccer team did so well at the recent Euro Soccer Championships.