To experience Square is to get launched into the Milky Way aboard a flying carpet shared with pink elephants, white knights, dark horses and uber sophisticates united in pursuit of a culinary experience just beyond the grasp of your imagination. And it has the city’s glitterati not just talking, but flocking. The concept is brilliant, “to make fine dining in Iceland fun,” says head chef Thorarinn Eggertsson, the 2005 Icelandic Culinary Champion. The fun begins at the cocktail bar with a so-cool Studio 54 feel—any cocktail that makes use of the slushie machine on the counter is a winner. Then it’s onto the cuisine, which will knock your stilettos off. At the top of the chef’s recommendations is the “Let’s Go Crazy” menu, a tasting menu that capitalizes on the freshest ingredients in the kitchen—sometimes it may be Dutch eel or kangaroo, veal, langoustine or fish caught the same day. Desserts are left to the whim of the chef himself and the resident chemist—how about that “futuristic ice cream” made at your table and with the help of liquid nitrogen. Or those nachos that... aren’t actually nachos? See, taste, experience for yourself.

Sara Blask
Freelance writer
www.sarablask.com

Þorarinn Eggertsson

The chef
Worked at Sea Grill in Brussels before winning the Icelandic Chef Association´s Chef of the year award in 2005, the year he opened glam French restaurant Silfur. Now 29, Eggertsson opened the follow-up. Orange, in April.

The restaurant
Eggertsson likes "fun and fine dining"; at Square, fish bowls hang from silver walls and waiters have been known to start impromptu bingo games. Colour-changing lights and glitter balls make for a retro disco ambience.

The food
Molecular Mediterranean fare: a duck liver and Coca-Cola starter is served in a tiny bottle; others float in on helium balloons and gourmet" aeroplane meals" arrive in plastic pots.

What´s next?
The autumn menu will feature a lot of game: reindeer, grouse, goose. A new restaurant, in the UK or Denmark is under discussion.

Condé Nast Traveller