Eating Out: IKEA

Hey, don’t laugh - you know you’ve been there. Wandering the display floor in search of that perfect sidetable or hopelessly lost in the warehouse trying to find aisle 16 bin 35, you suddenly feel weak, beaten. Hungry. Luckily, IKEA is there for you with prefab dishes served cafeteria style in a sterile yet oddly welcoming atmosphere. Their food, like their products, varies in quality from “not-so-hot” to “pretty-ok-actually-especially-since-it-cost-almost-nothing”, but by using some discretion and common sense, hungry shoppers can recharge and relax for under six bucks a person.

Selections behind the plexiglass panels range from seafood salad to Swedish meatballs, and herein lies lesson one. It’s a cafeteria in a Swedish superchain. Mussels or meatballs? The choice is obvious. The (previously frozen) meatballs come in three sizes ($4.29 and up), are evenly doused with a sweet gravy and served aside boiled potatoes and ligonberry jam. Not impressed? Compare that to the abominable turkey wrap ($3.99) and you will be. The mozzarella-tomato-and-basil sandwich proved another modest disappointment, but the basil was surprisingly crisp, and the cheese made a tasty salad topping. Speaking of salad, it’s only $1.49 when added onto a meal. Shrink-wrapped entrees also include poached salmon with dill, smoked salmon on toast, and a tempting mac-n-cheese combo plate, but one can only do so much research in one trip.

But what’s a cafeteria meal without dessert? Bostonist, working for YOU, the GOOD PEOPLE OF BOSTON, scoped out the sweet side, and the verdict is in: skip the dessert case, go for the cinnamon bun. The ligonberry cheesecake ($2.49) was not bad, but also not great and also not particularly cheap, while the chocolate cake (similarly priced) came out a tad stale. The Daim torte looks yummy but remains under investigation, and at only .99, the delicious and sticky cinnamon bun holds the crown. Unfortunately, you can only get one at the exit café, along with ice cream, hot dogs, and huge bags of Swedish fish.

It seems unfair to give IKEA cuisine a hat rating – it would be like rating MREs or astronaut ice cream– but next time you’re in Stoughton stop in for some meatballs. And let us know about that Daim torte.

Lovely photos courtesy of Flickr users heipei and thenestor, respectively.