Taste: My Life through Food(39)

We were to be staying about an hour’s flight away from Reykjavík in a little town of about 2,300 people called Egilsstaeir. As I’ve said, I don’t eat dairy and eat very little sugar, but at this point I had also cut gluten out of my diet, so I was rather nervous about just what exactly I’d be able to eat while I was there. Our hotel rooms had no kitchens, so I knew I’d be beholden to whatever was served in house or at the few restaurants in town. I was to be there for almost two weeks, so I brought a box of canned soups, gluten-free crackers, and a lot of other pathetic free-of-this and free-of-that foodstuffs.

I checked into our Icelandair Hotel, which was the tallest building around, at five stories, and a study in boxy nondescript minimalism. The ground floor consisted of a small check-in desk, to the left of which was a little seating area and a bar. Beyond the bar was a very spartan dining room. Although the place was clean and well lit and the staff rather cheery, I thought that two weeks here might be pushing it. My room was very much the same, actually less than spartan. (Which, I guess would be just… spart?) There was a firm bed (and I mean firm), a small closet, a dresser, a desk, a small fridge, a kettle, a bathroom, and a television that, when it worked, got four channels, one of which was BBC One, thank God. In short, it’s a perfect hotel if you are in the witness protection program. I sighed. Loudly. But in Iceland, no one can hear you sigh.

I unpacked and hopped into the shower, which, seconds later, I learned offered only sulfurous water. After dressing and hoping I didn’t smell like a rotting egg, I headed downstairs to get a drink and a bite to eat. I met some of my colleagues at the bar and we chatted about the “eggy” water, how beautiful Iceland seemed, and things work related. After a couple of cocktails we made our way into the dining room.

The wine list was as minimal as the décor but there were some very drinkable choices, which was fine with me as I am not one for long lists of fancy overpriced wines. The menu had a few appetizers, about five entrées, a few sides, and salads, all of which looked very promising. Most notably one of the appetizers was fresh langoustine that I was told came from nearby waters. I asked about the lamb, which they said was locally raised. My decision made, I ordered both dishes and a green salad with fresh tomatoes.

Soon our appetizers arrived and on my plate sat two beautiful langoustines. They were split down the middle, grilled lightly, and dressed with parsley butter. In short, they were perfect. Because langoustines are quite delicate they must be grilled quickly and gently. I find that they are often grilled for too long and lose their moisture, as they have no fat. At the same time the taste of the grill itself can overwhelm the sweetness of the flesh and the whole point of them is eradicated. These were perfect. The salad that followed was of light green lettuce leaves and bright red cherry tomatoes with a chive vinaigrette. I was stunned. How were they able to get produce this fresh in the middle of nowhere? My lamb arrived next, and to this day it is the best lamb I have ever eaten. Perfectly cooked with a slight char on the outside, soft and pink in the center, it had a salty sweetness and melted in your mouth.

I asked our waitress where the fresh vegetables had come from. She told me they were locally grown without pesticides in geothermal-powered greenhouses.I Were they as sweet and deeply flavored as those from Southern Italy? No, they were very different, but they popped when you bit them and were delicious in their own right. Regarding the unforgettable lamb, I was to discover a couple of days later that Icelandic sheep feed on the low grass and herbs that compose most of the island’s flora, as well as seaweed, thus imparting to them their distinctive flavor.

From then on I looked forward to dinner at our ascetic little hotel. Luckily most of the cast loved to eat and drink, and this became the first of many nights we would spend together doing just those two things as Michael Gambon regaled us in his sonorous baritone with hilarious stories of a checkered life in theater and film.



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One beautiful sunny morning we drove about forty-five minutes inland to a more mountainous part of the island, where we were to film that day. As we drove along the roads the snow became deeper and deeper until we were driving between two fifteen-foot-high walls of the stuff. The only two actors filming that day were Michael Gambon and myself, so no makeup or wardrobe trailers were necessary, and even if they were, there would have been no place to park them. We dressed and were made up in our small individual trailers, which were parked below base camp perilously close to a waterfall and a torrent of a river. When all was ready we were ferried up to location, in a special vehicle capable of climbing over and through substantial mounds of snow. We reached base camp and were then brought by skimobile farther up the glacier to the set. As I love winter and all that comes with it, I was in heaven. We shot some of the scene, and when it was time for lunch we were Ski-Dooed back down to base camp.

As there was no room anywhere for a catering truck, there was a small pop-up tent from which the food would be served that day. Inside were our usual friendly caterers, whom we all agreed had done an excellent job so far. Today they stood over two huge pots perched on top of gas burners. I peered inside, and bubbling away was some kind of wonderfully aromatic stew. Unlike most days, when they had served us a variety of dishes in our production office, a fish factory the producers had commandeered in a small town where most of our filming took place, this single dish was to be our meal for the day due to the geographic limitations of the location. We grabbed our plastic bowls and queued up for what I was soon to learn was the traditional Icelandic stew known as kj?tsúpa. My bowl filled, I grabbed a piece of bread, walked back out into the blinding sunlight, plopped myself down in a snowbank with my colleagues, and tucked in. All I can say is that I don’t know if it was the surroundings, the camaraderie that extreme and remote locations engender, or the fact that the caterers served their historic stew with such nationalistic pride, but it was a brilliant meal.