Matur og Drykkur

The Verdict

If you are returning to Reykjavík and have already done the New Nordic circuit, Matur og Drykkur is the restaurant you should book next. At €€€€ pricing, it competes directly with DILL and ÓX, but it occupies a genuinely different position: where those restaurants interpret Nordic tradition through a creative or avant-garde lens, Matur og Drykkur treats old Icelandic recipes as the destination, not the starting point.

Portrait

The address on Grandagarður puts Matur og Drykkur in the Old Harbour district, a part of Reykjavík that has shifted from a working fishing port into one of the city's more consistent dining and cultural areas. The harbour setting is not incidental. Chef Gísli Matthías Auðunsson has built a kitchen around ingredients and preparations that are historically rooted in Icelandic fishing and agricultural life: cured fish, lamb, skyr, fermented and dried proteins that most foreign visitors have encountered only as curiosities. Here, they are treated as serious cooking material.

The atmosphere at Matur og Drykkur runs warm and relatively low-key for a restaurant at this price point. The room does not chase the stark, design-forward minimalism that defines some of the city's other €€€€ venues. Energy is conversational in the earlier part of the evening; the space fills steadily toward 8 PM on weekend nights. If you are visiting for a long, unhurried dinner with room to talk, arriving at opening time on a Thursday or Friday gives you the room at its most relaxed. By Saturday evening it is noticeably busier and louder, which changes the character of the experience more than the food changes.

This is an evening-only restaurant. Hours run Wednesday through Sunday, 6–11 PM, with Monday and Tuesday closed. There is no lunch service, which means the Lunch vs Dinner question answers itself by format: if you are planning a daytime meal in the harbour area, Matur og Drykkur is not an option. For a mid-day harbour meal at a lower price point, 3 Frakkar operates on a different schedule and at a lower price tier, works as a daytime complement to an evening here.

Given the dinner-only format, the value question comes down entirely to the evening experience. At €€€€ pricing, you are paying for a focused, research-backed take on Icelandic culinary history rather than technical pyrotechnics or tableside theatre. Diners who have been once tend to note that the cooking rewards attention: the dishes are not always immediately dramatic, but the logic behind the flavour combinations becomes clearer as the meal progresses. If you are returning after a first visit, the suggestion is to let the kitchen lead rather than looking for familiar safe options; the more traditional preparations are where Matur og Drykkur separates itself from Reykjavík's other restaurants at this tier.

For broader context on the Reykjavík dining scene, the full Reykjavík restaurants guide covers the current options across price tiers. If you are spending multiple days in the city, the Reykjavík hotels guide and bars guide are useful for planning the rest of your trip. For those extending beyond the capital, Moss in Grindavík is a comparable-tier destination worth adding to the itinerary.

Compared to global fine-dining benchmarks, Matur og Drykkur sits in the territory of restaurants like Lazy Bear in San Francisco or Emeril's in New Orleans in the sense that they are strongly place-specific and make the most sense eaten in the city where they exist. Unlike Le Bernardin in New York City or Alain Ducasse at Louis XV in Monte Carlo, the draw here is not classical technique or formal luxury; it is specificity of place and ingredient. Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, 6–11 PM; closed Monday and Tuesday. Address: Grandagarður 2, 101 Reykjavík. Budget: €€€€, expect pricing in line with Reykjavík's other top-tier dinner venues. Dress: No dress code is listed; smart casual is appropriate for the price point. Groups: No seat count is listed in available data; contact the restaurant directly for larger group bookings. Dietary needs: Not specified in available data, flag requirements at the time of booking.

How It Compares

Explore More in Reykjavík

• Full Reykjavík restaurants guide
• Reykjavík hotels
• Reykjavík bars
• Reykjavík experiences
• Reykjavík wineries
• Amma Don in Reykjavik
• Hosiló
• Brút
• Atomix in New York City
• Alinea in Chicago