On a cold evening in Reykjavík, the dish you want is rarely the most famous one. It is a bowl of lamb soup, a plate of fish and potatoes, or a slice of dark rye with butter. Icelandic comfort food is plain, warming and built on a few ingredients that have always been available on the island.
Travel on to Vilnius and something familiar happens. The dishes change names, but the logic stays the same: potatoes, rye, dairy and soup, cooked to get people through a long northern winter.
Two small nations with a shared date
There is a nice reason to put Iceland and Lithuania side by side. On 11 February 1991, Iceland became the first country to recognise Lithuania's restored independence. Vilnius later named a street in the Old Town Islandijos gatvė, Iceland Street, in thanks.
It is a fitting pairing for a two-city trip, and the kitchens of both countries make it easy to eat your way from one to the other.
The Icelandic dishes that feel like home
Ask Icelanders about comfort food and you will hear the same handful of icelandic dishes again and again. They are not the shocking ones from travel shows. They are the meals people grew up with.
Kjötsúpa, the lamb soup, is the classic. Lamb on the bone simmers with swede, potatoes, carrots and a little rice or oats until the broth turns rich. Our kjötsúpa recipe shows how little it needs to taste right.
Plokkfiskur is the other everyday hero. Leftover white fish is folded into a creamy mash of potatoes and onion, often with a little béchamel, and served with rye bread and butter. The plokkfiskur recipe is the one to make when the weather turns.
Bread, butter and a sweet rye
Rúgbrauð is the bread that sits beside both of those dishes. It is a dense, dark, slightly sweet rye that was traditionally baked slowly in the warm ground near hot springs. You can bake it at home in a low oven, and our rúgbrauð recipe explains how.
Thick butter on rye is one of the simplest pleasures in Icelandic food culture. It turns up at breakfast, with soup, and with smoked or cured fish at almost any time of day.
Icelandic snacks for the road
Not every comfort is a full meal. Among the icelandic snacks travellers meet first are harðfiskur, wind-dried fish eaten with butter, and kleinur, the twisted doughnuts found in every bakery and petrol station.
Then there is the hot dog. The Icelandic pylsa, usually made with lamb in the mix, comes with raw and fried onion, ketchup, sweet mustard and remoulade. It is probably the most famous food in Iceland among visitors, and a very practical lunch on a cold day.
Skyr belongs on the list too. Thick, high in protein and only lightly sour, it works as breakfast, dessert or a quick snack straight from the tub.
Lithuania's answer: potatoes in every form
Lithuanian home cooking shares Iceland's reliance on potatoes, but it does more with them. Cepelinai are the national favourite: large dumplings made from grated raw and boiled potato, filled with minced meat or curd cheese.
They are served with sour cream and spirgai, small pieces of fried bacon and onion. It is heavy, warming food, and the closest Lithuanian match to a bowl of plokkfiskur on a dark evening.
Kugelis is the other potato classic, a baked pudding of grated potato, eggs and bacon, cut into squares and served with sour cream. Like plokkfiskur, it is the kind of dish families make in large batches.
Rye and soup in Vilnius
Dark rye bread is as central in Lithuania as it is in Iceland. Lithuanian rye is sour rather than sweet, but it plays the same role: always on the table, always with butter, often with soup.
In bars, rye turns into kepta duona, strips of rye bread fried and rubbed with garlic, often served with a cheese dip and a beer. It is the Lithuanian bar snack, and a cousin of Iceland's habit of eating rye with almost everything.
Soup ties the two kitchens together. In summer Lithuanians eat šaltibarščiai, a bright pink cold beet soup made with kefir, cucumber, dill and egg, served with hot boiled potatoes on the side. In colder months, the soups are more like kjötsúpa, thick with vegetables and meat.
Pastries with a story
Both countries have pastries worth seeking out. In Iceland, kleinur are the everyday choice. In Lithuania, look for kibinai, filled pastries linked to the Karaim community of Trakai, a short trip from Vilnius.
For celebrations, Lithuanians bake šakotis, the tall spit cake with branches of dough, cooked layer by layer over an open fire. It is a long way from an Icelandic layer cake, but both reflect the same love of baking for family occasions.
A shared shopping list
Lay the two cuisines side by side and the shopping list barely changes. Potatoes, onions, root vegetables, rye flour, butter, sour dairy and a cheap cut of meat or fish cover most of the dishes in this piece.
The differences are in the details. Icelandic cooks lean on lamb and white fish, while Lithuanian cooks reach for pork, bacon and curd cheese. Iceland sweetens its rye; Lithuania keeps it sour. Iceland has skyr; Lithuania has kefir and a deep love of sour cream.
For a home cook, that makes both kitchens forgiving. You can swap cod for any firm white fish in plokkfiskur, use lamb or pork in a winter soup, and bake a dark loaf with whatever rye flour your shop stocks. The point of comfort food is that it bends to what is in the cupboard.
Eating your way from Reykjavík to Vilnius
On a two-city trip, the comparison makes ordering easier. If you liked kjötsúpa, try a meat and vegetable soup in Vilnius. If plokkfiskur was a highlight, order cepelinai or kugelis. If you lived on rye and butter in Iceland, you will be happy with sour rye and kepta duona in Lithuania.
Read more about Lithuanian food in Vilnius, from cepelinai to courtyard cafés, at Zatar before you book your tables.
Cooking the pairing at home
You do not need to travel to taste the connection. A pot of kjötsúpa and a plate of buttered rye make a fine Icelandic supper, and a tray of kugelis needs only potatoes, eggs, onion and bacon.
Serve them side by side with sour cream, pickles and dark bread, and you have a small northern feast. It shows how two nations far apart on the map arrived at very similar answers to the same question: what to eat when it is cold outside.
Why comfort food travels well
Famous food in Iceland tends to mean the dramatic dishes, and Lithuania has its own showpieces. But comfort food tells you more about a place. It shows what people could grow, store and cook through long winters, and what they still cook when nobody is watching.
That is why the humble dishes travel well. A bowl of soup, a potato dish and a slice of rye make a quiet bridge between Reykjavík and Vilnius, and a good reason to eat like a local in both.
About Icelandic MAT Kitchen
Traditional Icelandic recipes tested in home kitchens — from lamb soup to kleinur.