Bird opened in the summer of 2024 on the corner of Naustin and Tryggvagata, a downtown Reykjavik bar that the Reykjavik Grapevine flagged in its New In Town column that August. It trades on three things at once, a real beer list, a kitchen that runs late and a back room set up for karaoke.
The pitch is a music bar that feeds you. The kitchen stays open until the bar closes, an unusual promise in a city where most late rooms stop serving food early, and the sandwich menu leans into a metal theme with sandwiches named after the genre's legends. That combination, cold beer and a proper sandwich at one in the morning, is the reason regulars name it.
The room mixes a standard bar floor with a stage for live music, DJs on the busier nights and a separate karaoke room for groups who want to take the microphone away from everyone else. The beer selection is broad rather than deep on any single style, built to keep a mixed crowd happy across a long night.
Order a local draft and a sandwich from the metal-named list, the move the kitchen is built for. Reykjavik beer prices are steep by any measure, so the happy-hour window that most downtown bars run is the cheaper way in; Bird keeps the food going long after the discounts end, which is its own kind of value at closing time.
The crowd is downtown locals, music fans and the spillover from the Naustin and Tryggvagata strip, which sits in the thick of the Reykjavik bar district. Midweek it reads as a relaxed neighborhood bar, and the weekend brings the DJs and the karaoke crowd. Best time to go is late, since the kitchen and the music are the draw and both run toward closing.
Who it is for: night owls who want a sandwich with the last round, karaoke groups and anyone working through the downtown bar crawl. Who should skip it: early diners and anyone after a quiet cocktail room, since this is a loud bar that gets louder as the night runs.
The location puts it in the thick of the action. The corner of Naustin and Tryggvagata sits inside the downtown Reykjavik bar district, a compact grid where most of the city's late rooms cluster within a few blocks of each other. That makes Bird an easy stop on a crawl rather than a destination a drinker plans a night around, and the foot traffic from the surrounding bars keeps it busy on weekends without much effort. The entrance reads as a neighborhood corner bar, which undersells the size of the operation once the music starts and the back room opens.
The metal theme runs deeper than the sandwich names. Bird leans into a rock-and-metal identity in its music booking and its room, a clear point of view in a downtown where many bars chase the same broad crowd. Naming the sandwich list after the genre's legends is a small joke that tells a visitor what kind of night to expect, and the live music and DJ bookings follow the same line. For fans of the sound it is a destination; for everyone else it is still a late bar with a kitchen, which is no small thing in this city.
The late kitchen is the detail that sets it apart on a crowded strip. Plenty of Reykjavik bars pour beer and a few book live music, but the one that still makes a sandwich at closing is the one a hungry crowd remembers. See where it sits in our guide to the best live music bars in Reykjavik, browse the full Reykjavik bar guide, or set it against our global live music roundup. For another downtown music room, see Gaukurinn.
