Address: Bergstaðastræti 13, Reykjavik
Website: http://bernhoftsbakari.is/
Style: Icelandic, Scandinavian
Price: $-$$
Bernhöftsbakarí is another bakery I tried while in Reykjavik (yes, I was very busy with the Cake Tour while here :P) which seems to be pretty impressive in terms of history (it was established in 1834! O_O), although history doesn't help that much in what I was pretty much stuck with. I suppose it's never a good idea to come at closing time (I had arrived from Selfoss late in the afternoon and by the time I had got settled in my room, it was 5 o'clock... which means closing time. :/), but hey! what little was left behind should have been half price or something...
Yup, out of all my Icelandic destinations, these guys proved the worst, both in terms of freshness and taste. Unfortunately, I didn't come earlier in the day to see what other goods they had to offer, but at 5pm, there was literally nothing in the bakery and yet the line up was still out the door. My choices were what I bought (around 200kr)
and some sort of muffin, so I settled on the former, not only because it was in fact the best thing there, but I had been vaguely curious (though not overly so) to try this concoction, seeing as it's pretty much a staple of Icelandic baking. Every bakery in Iceland has a version of these danishes filled with custard and dotted with pink and chocolate icings and some other toppings. In this case, this was like a sample platter: chocolate icing here, some pink stuff, a little bit of caramel, some chunks of walnuts at this end and that large pool of custard in the middle. Um, I think that the concept itself wasn't one I particularly enjoyed. The chocolate icing and walnuts with typical airy danish dough was a fairly nice combination, but the caramel and pink icing (I'd like to say strawberry, but nothing in taste would tell you that) was a mistake. And then add to that the fact that this poor misguided baked good was far from at the peak of its freshness. Looking at the picture is enough to see that the custard had gone hard and started cracking and the danish dough wasn't in better condition. Old custard and a variety of toppings just was... not for me and I think I'll think twice before I try this thing again. :/And, alas, I guess the same applies to this bakery too, though, seeing as there are only a certain amount of bakeries in downtown Reykjavik, I *might* go back on those hypothetical future trips (if you keep saying it over again, it must come true, right? Right? ;__;), though I'm not too thrilled at the idea right about now.
Rating: *1/2
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