Cafeteria style restaurant in the IKEA store. The food is good and it is cheap. Home cooking scandinavian style. Meatballs and gravy, chicken etc. . The shrimp salad plate is nice. There is soup and desserts plus beer and wine. It is always busy and sort of noisy but you can have a full dinner with coffee and dessert for $8. They also serve breakfast if you are an early bird.

Eat at a furniture store? Why not!

I was in Ikea yesterday accompanying Mrs. Chasiubow, and as usual I was dreading the experience. Then I smelled food. My beloved dining companion informed me that they have a restaurant. Suddenly things were looking up.

The restaurant is a cafeteria-style setup, and most of the entrees seem to contain meatballs. They also do fish and chips, chicken, hotdogs, sandwiches, quiche, desserts and smoked salmon. You can have bottomless soft drinks. Surprisingly they serve alcohol too.

The ambiance is functional and clean, and the staff seem to be eager to please. The food is not terrific, but it is crazy cheap. I tried the pasta and marinara sauce with meatballs, which was okay. Mrs. C. had the mac & cheese with meatballs. It was reported to be good. I wonder what kind of meat is in those balls, but sometimes it is best not to ask too many questions.

Recommended for bargain hunters and sofa hounds.

There was nothing overly special about the food; it's cafeteria style. However, it's incredibly cheap and it does fill you up if you order the right food. The Swedish meatballs and the potatoes are a shoe-in and they are available at a great deal. What other restaurant offers dinners below $7.00 or breakfasts for $2.00? Exactly!! To make top-notch food at huge masses is quite difficult. So if you want fine, top-quality, authentic cuisine food, go to some other place and pay a hell of a lot more!

Saw good ratings for this cafeteria, so we decided to try it out when we were in Ikea. My expectations weren't too high: a "good cafeteria" is what I was looking for. After our meal, I was still looking for it. It wasn't this place.

Let's be realistic about what they do here. The Swedish Meatballs are the same ones that they sell in the 1 kilo freezer pack. I do mean the *same ones*, as in, the extent of cooking that they need to do is heat-n-eat. As I was standing in line deciding what to get, they brought up a "fresh" tray of fish for fish and chips -- the whole batch was a medium-dark brown, not at all appetizing. I ended up getting the meatballs. They tasted fine, every bit as good as a decent frozen dinner. Their potatoes are boiled, skin-on, bland as plain potatoes. "Salad" means someone dumps a bag of greens into a giant bowl for people to take from. Dressing comes in packets. Add a drink for $6.50. So it's a fairly inexpensive meal, but I left still hungry, and I'm not a big eater.

"Service" in my case consisted of having someone put 10 of those little meatballs on my plate, ask, "Potatoes OK?", plop a couple down next to the meatballs, dribble a shallow ladle of gravy on the meatballs (not nearly enough to extend to the potatoes), slide the plate across the glass to me and quickly turn to the next customer. I guess that keeps the line moving.

Ambiance, of course, is nonexistent: it is, after all, a store cafeteria. They make no pretense and take no effort to make it any more pleasant than that.

There are probably hundreds of restaurants you can go to that are better and no more expensive. I certainly wouldn't come here just for the cafeteria. If you're in Ikea anyway, it's probably not a total waste, but if you really want "value" you can get 11 of their 50-cent hot dogs plus a pop from the concession downstairs instead for the same price.

$1.99 for pasta
Yummy mashed potatoes with meatballs & ()berry sauce - killer deals for hungry kids and students.

Cafeteria atmosphere = help yourself, unlimited pop and no tip.

Food doesn't always have to be complicated. Sometimes its all about value.
Thank you IKEA, keep up the good work. I'm sure families with mouths to feed appreciate the effort.

Really gross food. Okay if you'll have coffee and a cake, but anything they cook (*umph*) I should say "warm up" is really terrible.

The ambience is just awful, it's very dirty and the turn-over is really high which doesn't give the (I guess) poorly paid staff enough time or motivation to clean the tables or sweep the floor. The place smells like vinegar from all the ketchup people eat with their heat-lamp warmed soggy fries and the children in the kid seats certainly don't help the horrible noise and filth the dining room is in on most days.

Really gross overall.

for a cafeteria, they sure have fast, tasty and most of all inexpensive meals. you cannot beat their breakfasts anywhere, a buck! i like their salmon and their fish and chips, you are allowed to replace the fries with veggies, which i always do and ikea itself rules, big up to the swedes! did i mention their wild mushroom soup, its like it comes from a high end restaurant.