Ut I Blainn at the Perlan - Reykjavik, Iceland

Our second day in Iceland included a city tour of Reykjavik. One of the listed places we would visit on the city tour was the Perlan, set atop a hill on six water tanks that supply the city with hot water. 

The Perlan.

As I researched the best restaurants in Reykjavik, I came across  an article in Culturetrip.com that named the restaurant at the Perlan as one of them. It notes that the Perlan is a "striking glass dome structure...one of the city's most recognizable buildings." The restaurant "sits on a revolving floor on top of the city's hot-water storage tanks and provides breathtaking 360-degree views of Reykjavik." 

Just under the dome in the Perlan.

Looking out at downtown Reykjavik with two water tanks in the foreground. 

Since our itinerary called for lunch between our morning whale watching cruise and our city tour, which began at 1:00 p.m., I called our travel agent and asked if she could arrange for our lunch to be at the Perlan and have the guide meet us and start our city tour there. 

Our table right next to the dome windows. 

Ut I Blainn is the restaurant in the dome on the fifth floor of the Perlan and normally requires groups to be 20 people, but agreed to accept our group of 10 people for lunch. We had to decide on a group menu and settled on one that included: (1) soup of the day with sourdough bread and butter; (2) steamed cod with white onions, fried potatoes, beurre blanc (a hot emulsified butter sauce made with a reduction of vinegar or white wine and gray shallots into which cold, whole butter, is blended off the heat to prevent separation); and (3) a chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream and blueberries. 

The day in Reykjavik was sunny, but cool, and the glass dome of the Perlan gave us access to that sun and its concentrated warmth and was a beautiful spot for a nice, leisurely lunch. 

The bread, like all the bread we got in Iceland, was fantastic. Hearty with great butter. 

The soup was very bland and I didn't care much for it. I ate a couple of spoon fulls and quit. I don't even recall what kind it was.

The steamed cod was amazing. It was fall-apart tender, about as tender as it could be and the beurre blanc was very flavorful. It was pretty light, perfect for a big lunch. 

The chocolate brownie and ice cream were pretty good, but it was the cod that stood out. 

We finished lunch with a walk around the deck on the outside of the Perlan with its views of Reykjavik. Ut I Blainn is a good restaurant for its setting and with good enough food not to detract from that setting.