Iceland offers many great restaurants, but if you want to keep your trip budget in check, you’ll need to prepare most of your meals yourself. What kitchens can you count on in Iceland, and what do you need to keep in mind when preparing for this kind of trip? We cover all of it in this guide.
Self-catering and grocery shopping in Iceland
Eating out in Iceland is quite expensive. Even in cheaper restaurants, the prices of main courses usually land somewhere around $25. In more expensive restaurants, a six-course dinner menu starts at $125 per person. It’s worth trying the local specialties, but at such price levels most travelers – from all over the world – eat out only occasionally and rely on their own cooking skills. For more on local specialties, unique dishes that are really worth trying, and where to do it and for how much, check out this article: What to eat in Iceland – interesting dishes and prices in restaurants.
If you cook for yourself, you will also do the shopping yourself. On that front, bear in mind not only that not all supermarket chains are equally cheap, but also that outside Reykjavik such cheap big grocery stores are few and far between. So you need to plan your shopping well, especially if you rent a small car for 4 or 5 people and simply can’t fit a week’s worth of provisions into it.
Grocery shopping is also more expensive than in many other countries, but not all products are so expensive that, for example, it pays to bring them with you from home. We write about how much food costs in Icelandic stores, which supermarkets are the cheapest and what you can bring with you to Iceland in this article: Shopping in Iceland: food prices and grocery store opening hours.
Cooking in hostels in Iceland
If you’re staying in hostels, you’ll have access to a pretty well-equipped kitchen and dining area. Usually you will also find small quantities of various products left behind by other tourists – salt, some pasta and/or rice, sometimes jam, coffee, tea, etc. You’ll also use the refrigerator without a problem, although you’ll probably keep most of your food in your car, since you rarely sleep twice in one place, and the nights are cool practically all year round.
Between hostels you’ll probably travel by car, so buying and carrying heavier items – cans, jars, etc. – won’t be a problem either. This is certainly a very convenient solution and – for Iceland – quite inexpensive.
In those private guesthouses where guests are provided with a shared kitchen, the situation is the same.
In a hostel kitchen you have to fit in (or take turns) with other guests, but you cook practically like at home. You have a comfortable kitchen at your disposal, all the pans, kettles, dishes, cutlery, shelves, cloths, etc. Things usually have to be washed up after yourself, but there is always hot water, so this is not a problem either.
In the afternoon and evening, individual groups or people often cook at different times, so there is little problem with taking turns in the kitchen. It can be more difficult in the mornings, but we have never run into any serious problems due to a crowd in the kitchen.
Cooking in mountain huts in Iceland
Things are a little different if you want to sleep and cook in mountain huts. These are very diverse facilities and it’s best to check each one carefully before booking or… be prepared for anything.
Some huts (e.g. Kerlingarfjoll) provide campers with a well-equipped, heated indoor kitchen with a dining area. In others (e.g. Nyidalur), the kitchen is available to tourists, but it is small and less well-equipped. Unfortunately, it’s also often the case that inside the hut building you can only eat meals bought from the hut restaurant (Hveravellir, Laugarfell), and if you want to cook something of your own, you have to do it outside, with your own equipment.
Finally, the smallest huts (like the one on Fimmvorduhals) are basically small and very simple mountain shelters. They have no separate kitchen or dining room at all, and once there, you have to use common sense. If the weather is nice, cook outside. If it’s foul, work out with the other guests how you’ll handle it…
Only in the largest huts can you leave your garbage. In the others, you take your garbage with you. Hot water and some place to wash up is probably available in each of them, but often outside. And you must bring your own dish soap and cloth. Keep that in mind as well.
Cooking at campsites in Iceland
There are plenty of campsites in Iceland, and it’s easy to find a place for the night (at least from May to September, when all of them are open). However, when it comes to cooking, campsites vary a lot. Particularly important here is the distinction between campsites in the interior (usually attached to some kind of mountain hut) and those outside it. At campsites outside the interior (especially those along Route 1) you will almost always find some kind of dining room and kitchen (yes: not always, but almost always). Unfortunately, they will rarely be spacious, warm and well-equipped rooms.
Positive standouts include the campsite in Grindavik, Camping 66.12 North at Manarbakki in the far north, and the campsites in Fludir and Thorisstadir. They provide camping guests with sufficiently spacious, decently equipped kitchen-dining rooms sheltered from the cold and wind. On the other hand, the most common standard in Iceland (also along Route 1!) is a proper indoor, equipped, but really small kitchen. You’ll be able to prepare everything in it fairly comfortably, but sometimes you’ll have to wait for the previous guests to finish cooking and free up space. Note: Grindavik was evacuated during the 2023-2024 eruptions and reopened in October 2024, so check whether its campsite is operating before you count on it.
Unfortunately, at some campsites – including those outside the interior – the standard is really low. For example, in Grundarfjordur there is no kitchen or dining room for guests at all. At Camping Myvatn there is only a rather flimsy shed with tables but no kitchen, and at the Lifsmotun campsite, for example, there is a kitchen, but the wind blows right through it and the temperature inside is basically the same as outside.
Cooking at campsites in the Icelandic interior
Cooking at campsites in the interior also varies, although here the proportions are reversed, so to speak. These campsites most often do NOT provide any kitchen for guests, and the dining area offers a place to sit but rarely really protects you from the wind or cold. An example is probably the largest and most popular campsite in the interior – Landmannalaugar, where the common dining area is a large but cold, drafty and heavily crowded army-style tent.
At campsites next to a mountain hut you can sometimes use the hut and cook something on your own stove inside the building. However, campsites such as Landmannahellir or Hveravellir do not provide campers with any indoor space. Basar Hut, on the other hand, gives campers a separate shelter of their own, but the hut itself is off limits to anyone not staying there overnight. A complete, and very, very positive exception is the aforementioned Kerlingarfjoll campsite, where, in a separate heated building, campers have at their disposal not only a dining room but also several large cooking burners and virtually all the necessary kitchen equipment, sinks, trash cans, hot water, etc.
Cooking in an RV in Iceland
Of course, among campsite guests, those who came in an RV have it best. Especially in the larger ones – motorhomes – a comfortable kitchen and table are always at your disposal regardless of the temperature, wind or crowd outside. This matters, because it means you can also cook without any problems in the middle of the day, somewhere by a beautiful waterfall or a charming canyon… Just remember not to pour out dirty water or leftovers where it’s not allowed. Some campers – such as the off-road, 4×4 ones – have a kitchen sink but no tank for so-called gray water. The water from the sink then lands directly on the grass or asphalt under the vehicle – don’t do this outside the campsite, and use common sense at the campsite as well…
If you are traveling in a smaller camper – a campervan – it will be more convenient to cook outside the vehicle. If necessary, you can always do it inside as well. Given the strong wind and frequent low temperatures, you may well end up cooking inside the camper quite often…
Whether it’s a campervan or a motorhome, a stove and some supply of gas will definitely come with the vehicle. You can buy canisters for small stoves at many supermarkets and most gas stations (those with any kind of store, of course), as well as at some campsites. An empty large cylinder for a full-size cooker, on the other hand, can be swapped for a full one only at larger gas stations.
Either way, driving an RV and being able to prepare a meal anytime and anywhere makes it perfectly easy to plan the entire trip and saves a lot of time.
Cooking on backpacking trips in Iceland
If you’re planning to cook at campsites because you’re trekking through Iceland on foot, you probably know how to prepare well for such a trip (Iceland is hardly beginner’s terrain). Just keep in mind that most of the huts in the Icelandic interior don’t look much like the mountain huts you may know from home. Shopping there will be severely limited (the exception is the decently stocked Landmannalaugar). Similarly, restaurants – if there is one in a hut at all, it is 99% certain to be really expensive – you are unlikely to find dishes for less than $22.
So, when hiking for a few days (e.g. on the Laugavegur trail), freeze-dried food will work great (it’s best to bring it from home). Freeze-dried meals are hard to find in Iceland, but in almost every supermarket you will find, for example, instant noodle soups for about 80 ISK (that’s about $0.66), or dishes that need only a short boil – for example, a serving of Italian ravioli with ham (250 g / 9 oz) is about 500 ISK (about $4). Of course, dry pasta, rice, sauces in packets – all this is easily available.
Water on the trails is available practically only in the valleys, and these are deep and very steep. The fresh glacial landscape is beautiful but a bit impractical. So carry plenty of bottles and fill them at every stream.
Freeze-dried foods – the perfect innovation
If you want to minimize both the cost of buying and of carrying food on a slightly longer trip, freeze-dried meals, increasingly popular among hikers, are an interesting solution.
Freeze-dried foods are food products that have undergone freeze-drying, or sublimation drying (they are first deep-frozen and then quickly heated in a vacuum, so that the ice crystals sublimate, i.e. turn straight into water vapor). It is currently the most advanced method of preserving food – mushrooms, vegetables and fruits, meats, and even herbs and cheeses. Thanks to freeze-drying, food retains the physical, biological and chemical properties of the natural raw materials and is free of preservatives. And, by the way, it takes up very little space in your suitcase and, packed in your backpack, does not weigh it down like canned food. It is estimated that most products retain no more than 6-10% of their original weight. To prepare a wholesome and reasonably tasty meal, all you need to do is top up the contents of the package with water and heat it. Comparisons to instant noodle soups are very unfair to freeze-dried food, both in terms of quality, variety of flavors and nutritional value. Although preparing the dish looks similar, it is really a completely different world, and freeze-dried food is used not only on virtually all professional high-mountain expeditions, but also by NASA in space…
Freeze-dried meals work well primarily as a relatively quick warm meal during the day, when you really need to shave every pound off your backpack and you won’t see a store for several days. It’s not a bad idea to take some as an emergency meal in case something goes wrong and your hike runs a couple of hours or a full day behind plan. When assumptions fail – we have overestimated our abilities, the weather or a river does not let us move faster, or we have spent too much time in some particularly beautiful place – a supply of freeze-dried food protects us at least as far as food goes. Freeze-dried food is a good, light and nonperishable idea for such a quick lunch or emergency dinner.
The best places to buy freeze-dried food are online and brick-and-mortar stores with an assortment for travelers. And it’s definitely worth doing it before you leave home, because they’re hard to buy in Iceland. Lyofood brand meals are probably the tastiest. The largest portions are offered by Trek’n eat. And the best value for money in terms of quality and taste is probably Summit to Eat.
You can find a wide selection of meals on Amazon, for example: LyoFood on Amazon
Barbecues in Iceland
Although the nights in Iceland are almost always cold and the wind almost never stops, the beautiful evenings – especially in summer – are very long, so barbecues are quite popular at campsites. Barbecue spots can be found at quite a few campsites and are usually provided to guests free of charge. You can then buy charcoal and firelighters at the campsite store or from the campsite staff, but of course it is cheaper to buy them at almost any supermarket or gas station store.
If you’re renting a car or campervan to drive around Iceland, perhaps it’s worth renting a small, foldable camping grill along with it? Many car rental companies offer this option, and the taste of a grilled steak or trout somewhere in the wild interior is absolutely unforgettable.
If you are using your own grill, ask the campsite staff whether there are designated areas for it, and if need be check with your neighbors that it won’t disturb them.
Of course, meat for the grill – lamb, poultry, fish and vegetables – is available in a wide selection in virtually every supermarket, both pre-seasoned and completely raw.
Carrying charcoal and firelighters with you, as well as raw meat, complicates the logistics somewhat. Grilling itself is also not the fastest, and forces you to sit outside whatever the weather. But then, after a few days of instant noodles, hot dogs and freeze-dried meals, a lamb steak, fish or freshly grilled zucchini is an inexpensive treat worth any sacrifice…
