101 Hotel, Reykjavik, Iceland

Reykjavik Bacon Lover

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Ordered at 101 Hotel in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Overall Score 86.3/100
Presentation 7.3/10 Meat Quality 8.9/10
Fruit / Vegetable Quality 8.3/10 Bread Quality 8.2/10
Mayo / Sauce Usage 8.9/10 Value 8.7/10
Ingredients Ratio 9.2/10 Sides 8.7/10
Holdability 9.2/10 Overall Taste 8.9/10

Why Iceland?

Rachel and I only had one weekend during the first 6 months of 2014 to go away together. Our original thought was to travel to “The South” in America. Long story short, Iceland was faster, easier, and cheaper to get to than any destination we chose in “The South”… not to mention, it offered an experience not found in America, which is always appealing to us. So Iceland it was.

The flights made our trip particularly appealing: leave Thursday night at 9:30pm after work, arrive Friday morning at 6:30am, depart Sunday at 5pm, arrive back in Boston at 6pm. Easy!

This was not meant to be a relaxing getaway. Thankfully our room was ready at 8am when we arrived to Hotel Borg; a huge breakfast followed by napping for 3ish hours made the transition into Iceland much easier. After exploring the city’s cafes and shops, we were off for the evening, driving through lava fields, trekking through lava caves, feasting on an Icelandic lobster dinner (yum – like a mix between Maine lobster and Dungeness crab) and finally hunting for the aurora borealis. Back at the hotel and off to bed.

Saturday’s main focus was glacier hiking. Wow did we enjoy this. Rachel and I both agreed that while the epic black sand beaches, waterfalls that you could walk behind, and vast deserts covered in ash (not to mention the abandoned plane wreck), were all amazing, the glacier hike just stole the show.

To top off an amazing Saturday, we had dinner at Grillmarkaðurinn (The Grill Market), which turned out to be one of the best means we had enjoyed in quite some time. We gorged on their 8 course tasting menu; my personal favorites were the blue link, a fish I had never tried before, and the seared Minke whale, which was a delicious cross between tuna and tenderloin… I highly recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Iceland.

Sunday was spent strolling the city in search of gifts to bring home. I ended up buying a giant pastel painting that the hotel said it would ship back (while I sit here dreading it will show up in Boston completely destroyed) and Rachel some cool clothes. But hunger overtook us, and food was what we began searching for.

It wasn’t before long that we stumbled upon 101 Hotel . Fantastic interior design seemed de rigueur in Iceland. Every hotel, restaurant, cafe, bar, club, etc that we wandered into clearly spent time focusing on their interior design. We wondered if this was a side effect of the “no sun during the winter months,” keeping Icelanders mainly inside. Perhaps. Either way, 101 Hotel didn’t deviate from this standard.

While it was the design that originally brought us in, the club sandwich is what kept us there. I was pleasantly surprised to see this on the menu, and Rachel and I decided to sit down and fuel up.

Sleek modern furniture, art that looked like it belonged in NYC’s MOMA, and ample light filling the environment, the developers of 101 Hotel spared no expense in its creation. As I sat waiting for my club sandwich to arrive, I hoped the chefs took the same care in its making as the developers did with the hotel.

“Sleek Design” was unfortunately not one of the ingredients in the 101 Hotel club sandwich. That aside, however, this club sandwich was delicious. I really enjoyed the overall flavor of each bite.

Bacon was by far the star ingredient. I had dined on Icelandic bacon the entire trip, and this meal was no different. The thin layer of chicken was a bit dry, but accompanied the bacon perfectly as a secondary protein.

The “salad”, which I would call lettuce, added with the red tomatoes, created a lovely cool crisp moisture to the sandwich. No mayonnaise was necessary, but I did enjoy the flavor of the subtly applied mustard sauce.

This was a bacon lovers club sandwhich, make no mistake, and I was one of those lovers.

The fries on the side could have been presented better, but nevertheless they tasted crispy, crunchy, and just as expected. I didn’t want to eat all of them, but I did. Yum.

Thank you Iceland for a fantastic weekend getaway – we will be back, and next time, I will look for a club sandwich that embraces the same love for design that their interiors do.

Side Note – an extra treat on the flight back to America was seeing the glaciers of Greenland from the plane. Very cool! Photos included below.

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