Kaldi Bar, on Laugavegur
The story of Kaldi Bar begins not in Reykjavík but in Árskógssandur - a village of around a hundred people on the northern coast of Iceland, about ninety minutes' drive north of Akureyri. In 2006, Agnes Sigurðardóttir and Ólafur Þröstur Ólafsson opened a small brewery in Árskógssandur called Bruggsmiðjan Kaldi - the first of what would become a wave of Icelandic craft breweries in the years following the 1989 beer legalisation. The brewery's argument was simple: that Iceland had not had time to develop its own beer culture under prohibition, so the country had to start from craft principles rather than build a mass-market beer industry first.
The Reykjavík bar - opened in 2010 on Laugavegur, the main shopping street of the city centre - was the brewery's argument made physical. The bar pours only Kaldi beers, currently around fourteen styles ranging from a North-Icelandic pilsner to a smoked porter made with malt smoked over Icelandic birch. The interior is wood-panelled, small, and entirely refuses the brewery-tap aesthetic that mainland European bars favour. The bar reads as a Reykjavík sitting room that happens to have beer taps.
The key fact is that most beer drinking in Iceland still happens in a hotel-bar or rúntur context; Kaldi is one of the few rooms in the city built specifically for people who want to drink Icelandic craft beer the way Belgians drink Belgian beer or Czechs drink Czech beer. The bar has done more than any other operation to teach Reykjavík drinkers what their own country's beer can do.
Order the Kaldi Blond first - the brewery's flagship, a 5% lager built on Czech-style technique - and follow with whichever seasonal is currently on. The bar runs a tapas-style food menu (smoked lamb, pickled herring, rye bread) that is honest and well-priced for Iceland. Closing time is 1am weeknights, 4am weekends. Saturdays after 11pm get loud.