Hlemmur Mathöll
Reykjavík's first international food hall: a bustling line-up of vendors, from foraged Icelandic plates to LA-style tacos and FairTrade coffee.
We’ll admit it upfront: including a food hall in a guide to plant-forward dining is a small piece of cheating. But Hlemmur Mathöll was impossible to leave out. As Reykjavík’s first international food hall, it gathers a bustling line-up of independent vendors under one roof: a one-and-done destination for anyone who can’t quite agree on dinner.
That variety is the point. SKÁL! takes hands-on Icelandic cooking and pushes it somewhere more inventive, leaning hard on locally foraged ingredients: the most authentically Icelandic stop in the building, and a natural draw for plant-forward grazers. If you’re a sucker for spice, Fuego has it covered with LA-style tacos. KRÖST is the corner for Francophiles, all fine wines and continental classics. And Tea & Kaffi rounds things off with steaming cups of FairTrade coffee, an easy, conscientious finish.
The appeal of a food hall is the lack of commitment it demands. You can sample widely, follow your appetite rather than a single menu, and let a mixed group each find their own table without anyone compromising. For a city as walkable and weather-changeable as Reykjavík, that flexibility is genuinely useful.
It’s also a window into how the city eats now: local foraging and global street food sharing a single hall, FairTrade coffee treated as the default rather than the exception.
For travellers after a relaxed, low-stakes meal in central Reykjavík, with the freedom to graze across cuisines, Hlemmur Mathöll is the obvious, cheerfully democratic choice.
