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IKEA's iconic Swedish meatballs. One billion are served every year.
Opening weekend at the new IKEA in midtown: traffic moves, but slowly, as employees direct shoppers to available spots. Once inside the main entrance, one can’t help but follow the crowd towards the left, ceding individual identity to the masses.
Yelp photo
In the cafeteria line rivaling the queues at a popular Disney World attraction in peak season, one has time to take in the surroundings: whole families who have already been through the store, their wares precariously balanced on carts; children having meltdowns, one screaming repeatedly, “I want to go home!”; and adults who seemingly checked their manners at the door, so intent on invading your space, you wonder, “Am I invisible?”
On the wall hangs one of many posters highlighting a particular area in Sweden; this one: Gotland. The tranquil idyll of landscape devoid of people—just rustic huts and one ram that seems to be mocking you—underscores the chaos around you.
There’s a term for this: “IKEA Mania.” We knew it was coming. Working nearby, I witnessed the process—the razing of buildings, the ongoing construction, the paving of Vandeventer (praise the Lord!), the addition of green grass and plants to an otherwise concrete landscape, even the installation of talking walk signals, where the male voice barks, “WAIT!” in a way that only increases the mania.
Juxtaposed against the massive, antiquated “Elevator D,” a working 1953-era grain elevator that can hold up to 2.4 million bushels of grain, the sleek new construction, colorful and modern, beckons one and all. Part of the Cortex Innovation Community, IKEA has many advocates and some detractors. Love it or hate it, the store has provided the local economy with a boost, employing at least 300 people, and is poised to generate some serious tax revenue.
I’ll leave those conversations to others. This is about the food—when to go, what to get, how to get in and out without falling to the floor in the fetal position when the 58th person crashes into your ankles with her cart because she has to get across the aisle to the fluffy bathmat on sale for $7.99.
Over the course of opening week, I visited IKEA three times, for dinner, lunch, and breakfast, in that order. Dinner was the first Saturday it was open. While the store was packed with people, the cafeteria line moved efficiently with just enough time to resent the ram in the poster for his Swedish smugness and ample landscape.
Self-serve items included a vegetarian wrap, a salmon entrée with a bean salad, and several kids’ meals. The hot line offered meatballs in three varieties: the signature Swedish, chicken, and veggie. Sides like cornbread, mashed potatoes, and fries rounded out the choices along with small salads. Desserts included pies and cakes. Swedish juice boxes (elderflower and lingonberry), apple and pear juice, water, and milk were available for drinks.
Recommended: the veggie meatballs with sweet-potato sauce (above) and veggie wrap with feta and hummus (below). Skip the mushy vegetables that come with the wrap. Sit by the window and marvel at the crowds. Most curious sight was a couple dressed for a wedding, she in formal dress and stiletto heels, exiting the store with what appeared to be a gift for the imminent ceremony.
Upon leaving the cafeteria, I tried to find the Swedish market but confused “the marketplace,” which is essentially the rest of the store, with the market, and so was swept up in the wave of shoppers and had to travel through the entire store to get to the market and exit. This experience is not recommended while the store is crowded as it will bring out any latent misanthropic tendencies. In fact, it’s the only time in my life when I remotely thought I’d succumb to a panic attack.
I knew I was almost home free when I reached the wide open space that is the self-serve furniture area. The crowds seemed to disappear, Swedish pop music played, a juice sampling drew the most polite of the shoppers, and the heady scent of cinnamon buns led me past the checkout to the market. There, in full IKEA manic mode, I bought dilled herring and cardamom crisps, chocolate candies (Sweden’s Heath bar) and blue cheese, fried onions, and frozen marzipan-covered pastries—a selection (below) as random and chaotic as my journey through the store. Nothing disappointed.
Lunch was the following Wednesday and in the market rather than the cafeteria; lines were long but moved quickly. All menu items—both in the cafeteria and the market—show calorie counts, and in the market, that means that a hot dog is a better choice, at least calorically, than a slice of cheese pizza.
A frozen yogurt cone is $1.00 and serves as the perfect reward to making it through the store in one piece or as a light lunch for someone who’s been eating IKEA food all week. Taking advantage of the cheap prices, I treated a friend to the pizza, chips (Swedish, of course, with a bonus history lesson about the potato’s introduction to Scandinavia on the back), a soda, which, plus my yogurt cone, came in under $5. Again, nothing disappointed.
Breakfast the next morning was my favorite by far even though the Swedish pancakes had all been eaten up in the opening week (why they couldn’t run down to the market and grab some of the frozen pancakes for sale remains a mystery). No worries: waffles substituted, and their nooks and crannies were ideal for capturing both the syrup and lingonberry jam. A healthy heaping of scrambled eggs and roasted potatoes rounded out my meal, which totaled just under $5 with a bottle of water. That breakfast kept me full for the rest of the day, and I was particularly impressed with the eggs, creamy and flavorful. If you want to avoid the crowds, go during the week at 9:30 AM when the cafeteria opens.
IKEA’s shiny Scandinavian fantasy comprised of order, style, and tranquility contrasts with a darker vision depicted in popular culture through Stieg Larssen’s blockbuster trilogy, the crime fiction of Henning Mankell and Camilla Lackberg, the novel Let the Right One In (the vampire bildungsroman which spawned the excellent Swedish film of the same name and the decent American remake Let Me In), and the disquieting 2014 movie Force Majeure.
That same fantasy is easily disturbed by the crowds, so if you visit the store on the weekends or at night, be prepared. The same crowds also lead one to question the narrative of sustainable foods—salmon, chocolate, and coffee—given how many eggs and chicken tenders, for example, the cafeteria must go through every day. It’s undeniable, however, that IKEA offers the most affordable, convenient, and tasty dining options in the area.
