Askur, Brasserie — Restaurant in Reykjavik

I do not recommend this restaurant. We had been trying to eat a nice family dinner here for three nights, and when we finally managed to get into the restaurant, the experience was suboptimal. The first night we did not make a reservation (okay on us), so we then made a reservation for the following night. When we arrived, we were told that due to a national holiday most items were not in the restaurant. Okay, I can accept that as well. We didn’t give up after that and moved our reservation to the following night. First, there was no recollection of our reservation, so the implication was that we had just sat down without a real reservation. Luckily, one of the staff members who was there the day before vouched for us. Our waitress was nice, but we barely had any interaction. We waited a total of 45 minutes for our meal and were not waited on in the slightest. The floor beneath the table was dirty. After waiting, the food was suboptimal. Some menu items were unavailable. There was a strange fish in the seafood pasta that gave us stomach pain and tasted like mush. Then came paying. We were a party of five, but two of our party were paying separately. They went to pay first and did not receive a receipt. Then the rest of the party went up to pay and were charged for the entire meal (according to the receipt). After much disagreement, we were told that the two people’s cost had simply been taken out of the total, and we were only charged for the cost of the three remaining meals. This was taken at face value. Overall, this experience was not enjoyable, and the saga with Askur was not one I would repeat. However much the saving grace of good food was, the staff and cleanliness were well below...

The food is decent but overpriced (105 USD for two entrees and two drinks) and it takes a long time to receive it. The location is very convenient if you're staying at the nearby hotels, it's just a couple of minutes walking distance. Salad bar is included with your entree (although it would be nice if they actually told you that, we wouldn't have known if we hadn't asked). Drinks are okay but nothing to write home about. If you're used to the American medium rare, order medium here. A medium rare steak at Askur can readily get up and walk off the plate it's that rare. The service was not great. The wait staff does not know what's in the dishes - what ingredients or how they're prepared. The server was nice enough but I'm not sure they really took my dietary restrictions seriously. Not really convinced they even relayed those to the kitchen because the order arrived with allergens on the plate even after politely but explicitly discussing them several times. So either the kitchen didn't care or they weren't told. I know this is Iceland and here noone seems to care too much to accommodate allergies but you're serving a lot of tourists and it would be nice if you made a reasonable effort not...

An employee was extremely rude to me because I had brought in a bottle of Coke for myself, unaware that doing this was not allowed. Instead of politely asking me to put away the bottle and offering to sell me coke from the restaurant, she angrily confronted me, startling me and condescendingly repeating "this is a restaurant, this is not allowed" loud enough for our entire party to hear, as if I had just defecated on the table or committed some other horrific act. She later returned to finally offer me coke from the restaurant but maintained her aggressive and condescending tone. During the entire confrontation I was apologizing and doing my best to correct my mistake by putting away the bottle, but even after doing so the employee continued to berate me in front of my party.

I was later told by a fellow party-member who was sitting a few tables away that this employee was gossiping to other employees about me within earshot of members of our party.

Her agressive tone, rude behavior, and lack of professionalism made this non-issue situation much worse than it needed to be and ruined my day.

And the food......