Fridheimar: More Than Iceland’s Amazing Tomato Farm

Just over an hour’s drive east of Reykjavik is the town of Reykholt, Southern Iceland, explains Alex Allen. If you’re driving Iceland’s famous Golden Circle route, you’ll see it on the map as a greyed-out block, veined with a small grid of streets. In reality, it’s a sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it place, so small that you’ll have shot right through it before you twig.

In fairness, there’s not much in the way of visual indicators. There are none of the shop fronts, office buildings, or clusters of corrugated iron-clad houses. There’s almost nothing to tell you that this nondescript greyed-out block is where you’ll find one of Iceland’s most remarkable food experiences. Nothing, that is, except the tangerine glow of fluorescent grow lights radiating from within a football pitch-sized plot of greenhouses.

This is Fridheimar, an indoor tomato farm, restaurant and shop. If the thought of a football pitch-sized plot of greenhouses just for tomatoes sounds somewhat overwhelming, consider these facts: in a country that only sees five hours of sunlight a day in midwinter, owners Knutur and Helena have found a way to grow tomatoes year-round — and at virtual carbon neutrality. Their 5,000 square metres of greenhouses are warmed with geothermally-heated water, piped straight in from a borehole at 95ºC. When they’re on during Iceland’s low sunlight hours, the lights are powered by hydro and geothermally-generated electricity. Irrigation for the plants is provided by Iceland’s enviably pure, unprocessed natural spring water. Even the carbon dioxide, pumped in to boost photosynthesis, comes from natural geothermal steam.

So, the science and engineering behind it is impressive — miraculous, even — but that’s not the best bit.

The thing that strikes you when you enter — aside from the tomato-scented wave of sauna-like heat — is how this tomato farm is unlike any ordinary farm. Yes, there are endless rows of plants, heavy with ripening fruit. But it’s a back-drop to the delightfully incongruous scene of people sitting around tables, stripped down to t-shirts in the tropical heat, as wait staff bustle back and forth with plates of food.

There’s a bar, too, behind which staff are busily churning out drinks — Bloody and Virgin Marys, of course, garnished with crunchy-fresh sticks of cucumber. There are also glasses of a gooseberry-green liquid called a Healthy Mary, whizzed up from zingy unripe tomatoes, lime, honey and ginger. Then there are shots of birch Schnapps, served in hollowed-out tomatoes, and two varieties of tomato beer. Both are fragrant and dangerously delicious.

Fridheimar tomato farm and restaurant in Iceland
Friðheimar Greenhouse by Pierre-Selim Huard is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

While you wait for a table to become available — even in low season, you can guarantee it’ll be bustling in here — take a walk along the leafy avenues of plants, drink in hand. Tap the gardening staff for tips — they’ll proudly tell you about the biological controls they use to keep the plants in good shape, such as importing the Macrolophus pygmaeus bug to hunt down the insect pests that feed off the tomato leaves.

But it’s when you arrive at your table that the genius of Fridheimar comes into its own. You’ll be handed a menu, which is worth a look through, but there’s only one thing you should be ordering: the all-you-can-eat fresh tomato soup with doorstep-thick wedges of just-baked bread.

The tangy, sweet, piping-hot concoction tastes hearty and health-giving especially garnished with a dollop of the fresh cucumber chutney and snip of fresh basil you’ll find on the table. Slurping down bowlful after bowlful of hot tomato soup as docile bumblebees pollinate the delicate yellow tomato flowers on the vines alongside you is the ultimate idiosyncratically Icelandic experience.

Header image by Christophe Pinard and licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

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