3 Frakkar

One Reykjavík kitchen, held over time

Hashed Fish Úlfar’s Style with Black Bread carries the maker’s name straight onto the plate. Úlfar Eysteinsson, chef at 3 Frakkar in Reykjavík, built that kind of directness into a house known locally as Þrír Frakkar, or Þrír Frakkar hjá Úlfari. He established the restaurant with his family on March 1, 1989, at Baldursgata 14, and his professional story has stayed unusually fixed to that address.

From 1989 to 2018, Úlfar served as chef of the restaurant, and his owner-chef title became part of how Reykjavík understood the place. The lineage here is not a list of stages and mentors. It is the long way at one station: fish courses, puffin, whale, trout, salmon, lamb, reindeer, and the repetition required to make traditional Icelandic seafood feel like a living kitchen rather than a museum case. After Úlfar’s retirement in 2016, his son Stefán Úlfarsson took over the kitchen, keeping the family frame around the work. The restaurant does not turn that handover into theatre. It remains a room built around the same name, the same neighborhood address, and the same confidence in local fish.

Smoking, curing, and the local plate

The program at 3 Frakkar is à la carte, with a modest lunch menu alongside the fish and game dishes that have given the house its shape. The method is plain in the Icelandic names: Reyktur Lundi með sinnepssósu, smoked puffin breast with mustard sauce; Grafin Þingvalla Bleikja með graflax sósu, graved Þingvellir trout with mustard dill sauce; Hrár Hvalur Sasimi að japönskum sið, raw whale meat cut in a Japanese manner; Taðreyktur Skútustaða Silungur með eggjahræru og chantilly sósu, traditionally smoked trout with scrambled eggs and chantilly sauce.

These dishes show the house’s range without moving far from its discipline. Smoking changes from puffin to fish. Curing gives trout its own timing and texture. Whale appears as sashimi and as pepper steak with pepper sauce. Plaice takes butter and shrimp gratin. Redfish comes fried with lemon spice and wasabi sauce. Skyr is finished as brûlée, a French-inflected gesture placed on an Icelandic base. Stefán Úlfarsson has described the sourcing idea in one sentence: “food should not travel, people should travel.” At 3 Frakkar, that conviction lands in the station before it reaches the table.

The room with roses and fish on the walls

The room is small in feeling, a family restaurant rather than a stage set. Nautical décor sits beside mounted fish and game heads; lace covers the windows; wood furniture and leather seats keep the pace low. Fresh roses on the tables soften the room without changing its character. The background music stays low enough for conversation, and the pass sends out dishes that belong to a colder shoreline: smoked seabird, graved trout, whale, halibut with lobster sauce, creamy fish soup, skyr.

That atmosphere matters because the cooking asks for proximity. A plate of puffin or whale can become novelty in the wrong hands. Here it sits inside a longer practice of Reykjavík eating, guided by a family that made the restaurant’s Icelandic name part of Úlfar’s own public identity. The close of the meal may be skyr brûlée, honey crepes with chantilly, or the lingering smoke of Skútustaða trout.