For those of you who like Ikea food, you can look forward to A LOT MORE of it. With the worl economy slowing down, Ikea is apparently looking for other areas to maintain their growth and apparently they plan to DOUBLE sales of in-store food.

I noticed the other day in my local Ikea that they seem to be piping food smells into the register line area. Hmmm.....

Food at Ikea? I never tried that ... might as well visit them one day!

The lines in the Elizabeth , NJ location .. the cafe is always packed.. it bad enough the lines are long to check out , I don't think I'll wait another hour ( 1 cashier for 100 people in line)for a small meal.

If you have a full day of shopping to do there, then you'll be glad to sit down and rest your feet while you snack on something that is "OK' food. Remember this is not a fine dining restaurant.

yes. i have. but normally i just get like a cone or a cinamon roll or something. i don't have the time to sit and eat. but i would like to...

the meatballs are quite tasty, as is the ligonberry drink. It is so sweet that sometimes I mix it 50/50 with h20 to moderate the taste.

I agree with the above posters that its a good place to eat if already shopping at Ikea, but not necessarily a place to drive more than a couple miles to eat at.

I never eat at Ikea at home in Sweden, but when I am abroad and I am missing Swedish food it's nice to sometimes go there, have a meal and stock up on marabou.

mm mm good food.

Some friends lived near an Ikea in Northern Virginia and said the food was great and they needed to go anyway. I really didn't see the attraction, it was just like a cafeteria!

I'm not ashamed to admit eating at Ikea every chance I get, which is not very often as the closest one is a 4 hour flight away!

I love their Swedish platter with salmon and herring and the shrimp sandwich is great too!

The meatballs are really bad though.

The local IKEA is actually not a bad place to sit for a couple of hours and get some work done if, like me, you work better with consumer 'white noise.' I don't do it often, but 2-3 times/year I'll stop in if I need to do some shopping, and then buy a soft drink and a dessert or some meatballs and sit with my notebook and work.

The only thing I hate are the little drink glasses. I lose momentum if I have to keep on getting up for a refill. I wish they were at least 16 oz.

Just went to the brand new Ikea in Red Hook, Brooklyn yesterday. Took the free water taxi there and then completely pigged out! Meatballs with mashed potatoes, chicken wrap, some Swedish almond cake, lingenberry juice..and then post-shopping, a diet pepsi. In my defense, I was starved and hung over from the night before, so I needed to pad the stomach. :cool:

Of course I had the "mellan köttbullar" plate at IKEA when I was vacationing in Sweden. Lots of meatballs, boiled potatoes, cream sauce, ligon jam, bread, salad, soft drink AND coffee for about $9. Not bad for Swedish standards. Soft-serve ice cream (dispensed by a very cool machine) for about $1.50 is great, too. However, the pizza they were serving looks absolutely hideous.

Very sad that there isn't one in Denver. We wouldn't have to lug back 10 pounds of Löfbergs Lilla kaffe everytime we visit.

I have to say, the food is almost better than the furniture...

That's not hard.

That said, the cinnamon rolls are pretty good, and at $1 or so are a much better deal than the not-significantly-better-but-much-pricier ones at Cinnabon.

But you can't buy the Ikea ones at the airport :)