Sveinsbakarí [Mimi's World Tour]

Bakery: Sveinsbakarí
Address: Skipholt 50B, Reykjavík 
Website: http://www.sveinsbakari.is/
Style: Icelandic
Price: $$ 

Well, well, well, look who's back! A slight hiatus on the site means that great things are in store, because it usually means that I'm out touring -- cake touring, that is. :P And indeed I was. Not only do I have a whole bunch of bakeries from around Iceland (I did manage to go west and north this time around, in addition to finally reviewing every single bakery in Rvk - minus the suburbs), but I have a few offerings from the Maritime provinces as well, which signal the beginning of what I'm calling the Great Canadian Cake Tour (yes, all capitalized)! I'll alternate between the two until I'm done to keep it exciting. Check back regularly. :)

Nevertheless, it took a little more searching this time around to find more bakeries that still needed to be covered. In fact, I knew of one in Vesturbaer from my last trip and I was headed there when it started pouring rain -- I was at the university too! -__- So, I was forced to turn back and had to do a little more research to find this place.

Sveinsbakarí is a bakery with three locations and they seem to operate mostly from their suburban Breiðholt location; their branch on Skipholt is pretty easy to miss. Tucked in between home decor stores and offices on a not very pedestrian street, it nonetheless had quite a crowd, despite it being late in the afternoon. Prices were reasonable, but not cheap. As with a great many Icelandic bakeries, they had a shelf of fairly standard pre-packed cakes (apple cakes, etc.) Their selection wasn't too phenomenal behind the glass, with the remainders of two varieties of "vienna bread" in slice and single danish format being pretty much the single must-eat-that-day baked good. There were a few squares (among them rice crisp squares O.o) and some French-inspired pastries as well (at least, that was my impression; I vaguely remember some sort of meringue creations). Lacking some of the usual yeast-based buns and doughnuts, focus seems to be on pastries; rather, I'd say it was more on sandwiches and their website is exclusively special occasion cakes, but besides this. At the very least on pastries it remained for me. ;) 

For my first bakery purchase of my 2014 World Tour, I couldn't resist a piece of danish (265kr) with the pink icing, of course. I'd been feeling a little disappointed with danishes lately, and so it was nice to try something new and somewhat different. Sveins was unusually thin and it being thrown into a simple plastic bag, it actually ended up folding and curling like a crepe (surprisingly, it did survive for the photo ^^). With a thin layer of marzipan inside and some baked-in custard on top, I thought at first that I'd be disappointed, but it proved to be pretty tasty. A little too generous on the sugar to one side, but it was still nice and flaky and it was actually perfect with just the thin layer of marzipan as opposed to it oozing it out like other places. At any rate, it was yummy dough.

It wasn't the best I've ever had and selection as well as service weren't the greatest, but out of the three danish slices I had this time, I'd say Sveins came in a fairly close second. Seeing as it's fairly accessible from the city centre (as opposed to the others I reviewed this time around), it's very likely I'll return on a future trip. ;) 

Rating: ***