DAG VS. FOOD: IKEA Restaurant and Cafe, Richmond

Swedish Food by the Furniture Makers.

I'm going to be perfectly honest. I love IKEA. I love their designs. I wish my home looked like the ones in the IKEA catalogues. But I'm not blinded by love. I know despite IKEA's furniture ticking the right boxes in terms of looks and prices, the quality is something to be desired. And the same can be said about the food. Yet, it still doesn't stop me from eating at the IKEA Restaurant and Cafe every time I visit.

First of all, the Swedish must be a grandiose bunch. I noticed on the IKEA website, they refer to their eatery as the IKEA Restaurant and Cafe. Restaurant and Cafe. I couldn't help but literally laughed out loud. It's really more of a canteen. There's definitely no waiters to deliver food to your table and you will be clearing your own table when you're done.

Why eat there, you ask? Because it's cheap. You're not going to pay more than $15 for a meal. Just line up and some dude in a chef's outfit will slap some food onto a plate so quickly, you'll be back to wandering aimlessly through the showroom maze before you can say, 'Allen Key'.

Every time I visit, the only meal I go for is the Swedish meatballs. I love them. They come covered with a cream sauce and a little splash of cranberry jam on the side. I usually get them with mashed potatoes but a certain someone (Hubby Greg) insisted I have chips because his dish didn't come with any. He proceeded to steal half of mine- bastard!

Swedish meatballs

This was a “medium” serve of meatballs. Yikes! I can imagine the large serve comes with a Mt Everest of meatballs.

Greg decided to try one of the newest additions to the menu: a pork cutlet with apple sauce, broccoli and potato medallion plus veggies. There was a disturbing issue with the accompanying veggies. Despite the picture on the menu failing to display any signs of this supposedly evil veggie, when Greg's dish was presented to him, half of it was peas. Peas! Yes, Greg's evil nemesis. Not to fear, he just traded his peas in for my chips- I think we all know who got the raw end of that deal. Anyway, Greg's opinion of his meal? 'Meh.' He's a man of few words. Today's lesson: Stick with the meatballs. 

Peas! Agh!

We don't usually do dessert when we visit IKEA but for the purpose of this edition of Dag Vs. Food, I felt it was my blogger duty to sample some of the desserts.

We tried the almond cake. Not bad, not bad. Don't expect a mind-blowing dessert but it's simple and not-to-sweet.

Almond cake

We also picked this chocolate block-thing. For the life of me, I can't remember what it was called. We'll just call it Choc-block. Choc-block wasn't as chocolatey as I thought it would be. It was actually overpowered with cinnamon. If you love cinnamon, you'll like it. I don't mind a sprinkle of cinnamon but I found this amount a bit much. I think I'll borrow Greg's words to describe it: 'Meh.'

The 'Meh' Choc-block

Did I mention you get free refills if you get a drink? Free refills. There are machines that dispense the drinks. Now that's an invitation for tight-arse people like me to use and abuse!

Refill, anyone?

If you pop by in the morning, Ikea has a super cheap brekkie range. Sorry, I didn't get pics from a previous visit; you'll just have to use your imagination. The basic hot brekkie dish with scrambled eggs, tomato, bacon, hash browns and a sausage was all for $2.95. By god, that's cheap!

All in all, cheap but acceptable canteen food. But the fact it's in IKEA means it's all good! Only the Swedes can get away with this....


IKEA Richmond
Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre
630 Victoria Street
(cnr Victoria Street & Burnley Street)
Richmond, VIC 3121

By the way , if you're wondering what we bought, we did not go home with any furniture. Instead, we purchased the coolest set of wall decals inspired by Space Invaders. Greg got his designer-mojo on and created this :)

Wall decals Space Invaders-style!