Crunchy water with fish flavor 🍽

How I finally popped my lingonberry at IKEA

“Deliver me from Swedish furniture. Deliver me from clever art.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

I went to IKEA not because I wanted to or needed anything. 

No. I went because a 15-year-old girl made me do it on her birthday. It was one of her big requests, right up there with mini golf and an escape room: Force mom’s boyfriend to go to IKEA. 

And you know that not giving in to a child on their birthday is akin to telling a Make-A-Wish kid to go kick rocks. You can’t say no. You do whatever they want. Them’s the unwritten rules. Or I guess I just wrote ’em. Whatever. It wasn’t all that dramatic in the moment, it was just annoying. 

You see, up until now, one of the things in my life I was most proud of is that I’d never been to IKEA. Not having been to IKEA was part of my identity. 

You: you wear a cross around your neck or put pronouns at the bottom of your email or flash designer footwear or treat waitstaff rudely. 

Me: I haven’t been to IKEA. Boom. 

But no longer — no. ’Cuz this punk-ass kid (actually she’s amazing, artistically gifted and disarmingly sweet) … this wish-droppin’, ego-poppin’, fun-stoppin’, entitled birthday girl (I’m creating rising drama here — roll with me), she’s stripping away this cherished part of my persona by making me go to IKEA. The nerve! Little shit. 

So that’s the setup. True story. 

But you know what happens when you take a food critic to IKEA? There will be meatballs. Yeah. Suddenly the forced march (sorry, I meant to write the word “journey” there) takes on a whole new meaning and mission: Make Matthew eat a bunch of lingonberry-laced stuff and film his reactions. That’s after the first part of the mission, which I sum up as: Make Matthew roam through every goddamn display room on the IKEA map, not revealing to him that there’s two layers (separate floors) to this unique hell until he discovers it, and also don’t allow him to use any of the shortcuts that he also hadn’t noticed until near the end. (Dammit!) 

Before we begin, there’s some relevant stuff you should know about me. 1) I generally dislike shopping and try to do it efficiently, often buying backups so I can prolong the time until I return. 2) Not since I was a child of the ’80s roaming the mall with friends aimlessly have I lollygagged around a store without a purchase in mind. I don’t go anywhere unless I need something. (Exception: art galleries and foreign street markets, which are cultural endeavors.) 3) I’m a dedicated recycler and upcycler, so I loathe American overconsumption and I don’t replace what ain’t broke just ’cuz something else is more novel (shaped like a cat, etc.). OK, stage set. 

As I pull the car into IKEA’s cavernous underground parking lot I ask: “Is this an independent city-state like the Vatican?” We park and work our way up escalators to the entryway. There, birthday girl shows me IKEA’s architectural scale model and I start nerding out over the huge solar panel array and water-wise features and eco-aspects that make IKEA respectably cool. (Oh crap, I’m not gonna like this place am I? Shit. Stay in character.) Next we ride yet another escalator up to the real beginning of the maze — oh great, my second escape room of the day — and I encounter my first couple designed-out living rooms that look like slices of people’s real homes, furnished down to tiny details as if elaborate stage sets waiting for actors to arrive and argue about something, or maybe sing. 

I suddenly feel like a voyeur. “Are you sure it’s OK to touch stuff?” I feel like I should tiptoe or sign a guest book. Then I quickly realize I’m being weird and within minutes I’m acting like an ass, imitating a gorilla as I walk by the Grilla (literally a grill) to make the children laugh.

In the ensuing hour (or was it a lifetime in another dimension?) we all zombie about, occasionally inspecting an item or sitting on a couch to rest or we just tromp forward because there’s no going back when you’ve come this far to please a child. 

We finally arrive at the threshold of a warehouse where they tell me you go to match item numbers for big item purchases. Thankfully we have none of these and can quickly pass through this Home Depot-lookin’ aircraft hangar of space. But not before backtracking to the cafeteria for dinner. By then, I’ve broken my vengeful vow to not buy anything, because nobody told me there’d be plants! 

Make that #4 of relevant stuff to know about me: I freaking love plants. I have a solarium/greenhouse and between it and my outdoor perennials I have a significant collection. (Hmmm, I guess I do impulse-buy stuff. Damn.) IKEA, you discovered my Achilles — touché. 

To the cafeteria at last. My spectators’ anticipation for watching me mouth meatballs is palpable. Here we are, 12 years since IKEA deposited its storpack butik (big box store) along the Front Range and I’ve held out this long. But I’m resigned to my fate as I grab a lunch tray and slide it down the cold, grooved metal counter feeling like a school kid and prisoner at once. We load up, check out and begin our furniture store feast. 

I’ve bought all three meatball options: the veggie, plant balls (vegan) and Swedish beef-and-pork meatballs. I learn that the latter — purloined culturally from Turkey as the Swedes publicly confessed in recent years — are the best option, which isn’t to say I dig them. I mean, they’re fine. Just fine. Barely fine. Grandma’s house safe-and-simple and sorta bland and hamburger-y and inoffensive but not special, not spotlighting, not nation-representing abroad in some win-me-over, ambassadorial way. The cream sauce on them (butter, flour, veg and beef stock, cream and dashes of soy and Dijon) assists with richness but doesn’t elevate them much, while dips into the lingonberry jam just remind me of tart cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving. 

At the precipice of popping my lingonberry I do not have any magical mouth orgasms or orgiastic delight. I don’t moan “uuuummm.” I groan “hmmmmm” (like… that’s it? … yawn). It’s an anticlimax, my IKEA virginity bespoiled but my heart hardly palpating. 

The non-meat balls, promoted as “Heavenly flavors from the soil” (and “you can be sure that food from the soil is tasty!” reads IKEA’s website), do not leave me feeling exultant. The chickpea- and mixed vegetable-composed veggie rendition have a mushy texture and mostly taste like the topping pea pesto, which is thick like a green lentil purée. And I’ve already maxed out on the dimpled, insipid peas that accompanied my main order of meatballs with a baseball-sized scoop of dry, sad, boxed mashed potatoes. The pea-protein Plant Balls (which need to be ordered sans cream sauce to be vegan) taste like what a toaster smells like when crumbs are burning off in the bottom, with kind of a toasted marshmallow skin vibe. 

But all the balls are still a better option than what arrives with my order of the Salmon Fillet, which is at least “responsibly sourced.” My cut tastes fishy, like it already had one fin in the great beyond. (Whatever the Swedish term is for that — probably something that translates to “cat food factory.”). The unremarkable topping red pepper relish does little to mask that, while the accompanying hockey puck-shaped and -sized vegetable medallion (actually compressed potatoes, broccoli, leek, onions and cheese) are again bland and mushy, inspiring me to fetch salt and pepper packets in a (failed) attempt to resuscitate them. Next, on to the  “seasoned” vegetables. There’s no seasoning to speak of unless you considered freezer essence. My eyes tell me all I need to know about this mix of corn, zucchini and squash. The latter two ingredients are translucent like sautéed onions, devoid of spirits. They may as well be the fake plants IKEA sells alongside the real ones. 

We force each person to eat a forkful of salmon and veggies and try to keep a straight face; nobody wins. The unpleasant taste lingers in the mouth and is not supportive of enjoyment in any way. Birthday girl, the tables turned on her, gives her bite a review of: “crunchy water with fish flavor.” I can’t beat that. 

But I can try to reset my palate with dessert and the Swedish Temptations trio: a cheesecake slice, a Swedish almond cake with chocolate and crunchy caramel (named Daim), and a small punsch-roll named dammsugare or Kafferep at IKEA. The cheesecake rates totally lackluster and the marzipan punsch-roll chews odd and gritty with a medicinal taste, like an old-fashioned candy stick infused with fluoride. Research reveals that to be the punsch liqueur which contains arrack, a coconut-flower-and-sugarcane spirit from Southeast Asia. I’m glad to try something new, but don’t care for it. 

I finish with the crunchy almond cake, which I actually do like (finally, something!), thinking of a Little Debbie Star Crunch from childhood, but more grown up. While we look this one up on our phones for info, though, we discover a recall underway on a batch of the Daim reported to have a metal object found in one of them. Something about the phrase “potential foreign material contamination” makes me chew with more attention and concern. I wash my final bites down with coffee, which I can also say something positive about. It’s surprisingly good and wholly serviceable. IKEA sells an organic, medium-roast, Rainforest Alliance Certified blend that’s smooth and easy with no off-putting over-roasted notes.

With the meal finally behind me, we make our way back through half of IKEA’s maze and through the warehouse and into an initial line of checkout aisles. I’m confused, because I can see yet more ahead after that, and I discover there’s a final grocery market, with a second set of checkout kiosks. Like at Costco, there’s a stall selling hot dogs, including a veggie dog. As much as I’m tempted to find out (I’m really not), I’m full and use that as an excuse to decline. Birthday girl thankfully doth not protest. 

I meander quickly through the market and notice how many of the items we just ate in the cafeteria are now for sale in frozen form. I have to say they do such a poor job of preparing them for you here that I’m amazed anyone’s loading anything up to go — like “Here, have these plant-based meatballs that you didn’t enjoy the first time.” It’s like asking a total zero on a second date. Why would you? 

A chef friend later tells me that he went to an IKEA in Sweden and it was actually good and that he believes what we’re getting has been botched in translation ostensibly on the prep side. I’m left thinking of my food experience as akin to visiting a hospital cafeteria, and I wonder with such a limited menu why it can’t be executed at a higher level. 

Then again, I don’t expect my mechanic to clean my teeth or my dentist to change my oil, reflexively, so why should I expect a home furnishings store to feed me well? The whole exchange seems counterintuitive. Like, don’t go to IKEA specifically to eat, even if it is kinda affordable, with the entrées mostly under $10. Go to shop if you really need something, and if you move quick enough you can escape back into the world for dinner. At least, that’s me. You might feel differently. You might even think I should have told the birthday girl to kick rocks to begin with and kept my chastity belt ever laced tight, nary tainted by mushy foreign orbs and sauces. 

It’s too late for that now, though. I’ve seen too much. And it was a lot. And it didn’t leave a great taste in my mouth. Deliver me from Swedish furniture, and the meatballs it rolled in on.

*Free subscribers are receiving this post early, along with paid subscribers, because this writeup will appear as the cover story of the CS Indy Oct. 25, 2023 edition. (They asked for some help during their busy Best Of award season, and I obliged.) If you like reading my reviews as they post, when they’re most timely, consider upgrading to a paid subscription for the early access and perks — it truly supports my weekly Side Dish production and I’m grateful. Cheers!