Stockholm Syndrome: Is IKEA’s food actually any good? Or are its shoppers just a captive audience?

A few months ago, a friend of mine, a journalist named Jacob Kaye, heard I’d be working at the Star-Revue this summer and made what he probably thought was an innocuous joke.

“You should review all the food at IKEA,” he said.

“Little do you know,” I responded, “that Red Hook is a vibrant neighborhood with scores of excellent dining establishments, a thriving art scene and culture dripping out of every seam in its historic brickwork. It’s more than just the neighborhood where yuppies go to buy incredibly brittle furniture. How dare you imply otherwise!”

Or rather, that’s what I should have said. Instead, I said “Maybe.”

Three months later, I found myself sitting at a cafeteria table gazing down at some forlorn-looking Swedish meatballs. They weren’t dripping with culture, just gravy. I began to suspect that I had made a mistake.

I always remembered IKEA’s food as being fine, I guess, but I suspect my judgment was impaired. The IKEA dining experience tends to come at the end of a stressful afternoon. Anyone who’s shopped there knows that IKEA’s cheerful, it’s a-small-world-after-all aesthetic lulls you into a false sense of security. A fun weekend jaunt quickly turns into hours of measuring, arguing, and measuring some more. By the end, you’re tired, sweaty, and watching children (maybe yours!) have an emotional meltdown under a mid-priced table with a name like “jokkmokk.” After a few hours of that, any kind of sustenance starts to look pretty good.

And so, I decided to go through with reviewing IKEA’s food to see if it was still any good without psychic trauma to goose the appetite. It is. Sort of.

Let’s dispense with an obvious disclaimer: there are better places to eat in Red Hook and you should go to one of them instead. But if you’ve been shopping at IKEA, you won’t. You’re too damn tired, you finally got the kids to chill the fuck out, and you just want to know what you can eat there that won’t make you feel worse.

The trademark meatballs are a decent bet. They’re not going to win any beauty contests, slopped onto the plate with a splat of gravy and an ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes. The meatballs are a little chewy, but in the pleasant way that food writers like to call “toothsome.” They’ve got a subtle aromatic flavor, and they’ll fill you up. The potatoes taste like they’re instant, but the plate also comes with steamed veggies, a mix of broccoli, green beans, snap peas and romanesco cauliflower. They taste surprisingly fresh, even though they look like they’ve been cooked to death. You could do worse.

The salmon filet likewise isn’t terrible. It’s been sitting in a steam tray for an indeterminate amount of time, but a lemon dill sauce perks it up. It comes with more of the steamed vegetables, and the surprise star of the menu, something billed as a “vegetable medallion.” The medallion looks like hell, a small, circular object with brown edges, and a pale center, at first unidentifiable. Cut into it, and it’s a crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside mix of potatoes onions and (weirdly) more broccoli. I ate it in three bites.

IKEA is very big on salmon and besides the filet, it appears as gravlax, cured salmon as opposed to the smoked variety we’re most familiar with here in the Five Boroughs. You can get it as a plate or in a wrap, but you shouldn’t. Really. It’s rubbery, doesn’t taste of much and is unhelped by a huge dollop of honey mustard on the side. You can get fish that’s at least as good at any bagel place in New York. If you want something light at IKEA, get a salad. There’s one with blackberries and blue cheese. It’s fine, in that it’s not actively bad.

There are desserts. Maybe the promise of dessert is how you got the kids to stop freaking out. Maybe you’re treating yourself because the goddamn jokkmokk won’t fit in your minivan. In any case, the various cakes on offer are not created equal, though some are remarkably good.

After my grim gravlax experience, I was pleasantly surprised by a custardy cylinder that I’m not sure exists – I haven’t seen it on subsequent visits or on IKEA’s website. It was fresh-tasting, creamy, slightly sour, and not overly sweet. It was garnished with lingonberries and had a little dollop of jam hidden at the bottom. It cost three bucks. It’s a real dessert!

Also impressive is a caramel layer cake with chocolate frosting and crunchy bits hidden under the icing. I’d eat it again right now. Beware, though, a pink domed object with a squiggle of chocolate syrup across the top. One bite revealed sickeningly sweet, grainy pastry cream. It tasted like instantaneous diabetes.

It’s worth mentioning that no single item on the IKEA menu costs more than seven bucks. Hell, they’ll serve you breakfast for a dollar. At the end of your shopping trip, that may be a small enough price to pay for an excuse to stop arguing about dressers. Or you could walk a couple blocks to Fairway, buy a sandwich, and look at the water for a while. But you won’t, will you? You still have to go home and put all this shit together.

Ben Masten