Hornið — Restaurant in Reykjavik

Hornið was kind of a staple in the Reykjavik food scene, being one of the first authentic italian bistro around town, some 30 years ago. As such, it carries a lot of emotional baggage to write a review about this place, because it has been associated with a lot of good memories through the years.

This is why it pains me to see the lows where it has fallen, not necessarily because it has changed but more because it hasn't. It still has the same staples it was known for from it's beginning, but the problem is that they have not really kept up with quality or ambition of current tastes. Pizza was a novelty in Iceland 30 years ago, but today you need to be a little more ambitious if you want to charm people. As an example, I ordered a seafood pasta, that in Iceland should be a symphony of taste and freshness. What I got was an absolutely bland stir of tasteless tomato sauce with under salted pasta and completely vapid small pieces of shrimps and boiled non-descript fish. Nowhere was there any attempt to bring the freshness of the sea with high quality seafood ingredients that are so ubiquitious here in Iceland. This was just a lazy stirring of the base components. Maybe the pizzas are still ok, I don't know, but pizzas come dimes a dozen.

They still have a great location, though only in the front room. The back room feels like an afterthought and has none of the charm of the front. As such it is a great location to have a cup of coffee during the day.

The staff and service was flawless, so nothing to complain about there.

I hope the owners will have the wit to let some ambitous chef take this place over and bring it back to the level it deserves, but until then I will look elsewhere for some simple honest italian food, because honesty is not the same thing...

Hornid is really close to the Reykjavik Konsulat Hilton hotel, so we stopped here for an easy dinner one night. The restaurant is on the corner and has a charming bistro style interior. We got a cheese pizza with black olives (extra) and my husband got a red wine. The pizza was okay. Not particularly delicious but it was more than enough and left us filled up. The house red wine was really bad, so you may want to upgrade to a better one. My husband thought it had gone bad, but I tasted it and said, "Nope, it is just a cheap wine."

While the waitress was fine taking our order, she never came back to check to see how things were. She did come to ask if we wanted dessert which we said no to, but she never came back with our bill. We waited and waited, and I remember that in many European restaurants, they don't hurry you out like in the United States. There was only one or two tables filled and it was late. I finally went to where the wait staff was relaxing to request our bill. As a suggestion, if you are ready for your bill, make sure you tell the wait staff or else you could be waiting a long time.

There were other Italian dishes like lasagna and pasta that might have been better, but my husband needed his pizza after a week...

Looks so lovely and welcoming on the outside with the decor of a cutesy place to have a nice meal. The staff was not very welcoming and looked either bored or pissed off for having to serve us (noticed not everyone got the treatment), had to wait a while for our drink and starter order to be taken, and then when we had finished our starters and the plates removed we expected someone to come and take our main order, but despite there being very few other customers, after 10 minutes we ended up asking if we could order our mains now. We ordered the pizza and the crust was lovely, but as you got closer to the middle it got soggier and soggier, after our dishes were then removed we expected a waiter to come and offer us to look at desserts, coffee or if we wanted the bill, but no, after 10-15 minutes none of the waiters had arrived, despite watching them going to other tables. Ended up walking up to one of the waiters asking for the bill and they just pointed at another waiter, when we finally got the bill the staff member was on the phone so didn't offer me a receipt or anything. The food was definitely not worth its cost, and the behaviour of the staff made it worth even less, hence no tip. We will not be going...