Hakarl and Brennivin:
An Acquired Taste

Orsolya Kako

To globe-trekking celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain it’s “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing” he’s ever eaten. Gordon Ramsay exclaimed “Bloody hell!” before violently spitting it out. But in Iceland, Hakarl and Brennivin is a quintessential dish, equivalent to American apple pie.

Hákarl

OK, maybe hákarl is not quite as common as apple pie. But the fermented shark meat is most definitely a uniquely Icelandic “delicacy” (depending who you ask, of course). Traditionally, hákarl is prepared from the meat of a Greenland shark, which is so full of chemicals urea and trimethylamine oxide that it’s poisonous when fresh.

Fortunately—and we use that word loosely—Icelandic vikings came up with a solution: the meat is buried in a hole and then covered with sand and gravel for two months, allowing the earth to rid the meat of its toxic chemicals. It’s then hung and dried for several more months, where it develops a brown crust that’s removed before serving. Traditionally, eating hákarl has been interpreted as a sign of strength, which makes sense once you’ve actually smelled it; it’s said hákarl smells even stronger (note that we didn’t say “better”) than it tastes.

So how does it taste? Well, here’s what happened when Ramsay tried it (skip to 2:37):