Icelandic food is a North Atlantic survival cuisine that is currently being reinterpreted with surprising ambition. The traditional foundation is fermented: skyr (thick, protein-dense dairy product eaten with berries and sugar), hákarl (Greenlandic shark fermented for three months — the ammonia smell is the famous part, and it is accurately described), and harðfiskur (wind-dried haddock or cod eaten with butter) are the preserved foods of a culture that spent centuries on the edge of food security. The lamb, free-grazed on heather and moss for the entire Icelandic summer, is the finest lamb in the world by a significant margin — the rack or leg, roasted simply, requires nothing else. Arctic char from Icelandic rivers, langoustine from the cold-water fjords of the northwest, and skyr cheesecake made in every cafe in Reykjavík extend the contemporary local food picture. Brennivín — the caraway aquavit nicknamed Black Death — is the national spirit consumed with hákarl as a test of character and with herring as a genuine pleasure. That's where it gets good.