IKEA Restaurant & Café

Picking to go to IKEA on a Friday night seemed like a good idea at the time. Except I’d forgotten that Fridays fall under the weekend category, which usually meant that shopping places became a mad house, especially where there’s a sale. Like almost the entire population that goes to IKEA, I had a hotdog, yet my tummy wasn’t fully satisfied. Deciding not to have another hotdog again, LL and I combed through IKEA to find the internal café. We found it – after 10 minutes of wandering around. (The paths always confuse me when it comes to short cuts.)

When we finally found the café it was packed! There were quite a lot of tables in that decent corner of a café. You could choose to sit at round tables, about a meter wide, with blue and white checked table cloth, or at wooden rectangular tables. Lamps hung from the ceilings near the table tops, illuminating the wooden tables with a splash of bright light. Unfortunately, the round checked-table-clothed tables had no such exclusive lighting.

Feeling a tad bit too greedy, LL and I ordered Chicken Wings, and upon the popular sight of Swedish Meatballs all over the tables, a plate of that. On impulse, being the greedy little piglets that we are, we snatched a plate of Fish & Chips too.

Bad impulsive decisions. The Chicken Wings were crispy dry and moist in all the right places. To fork out $1.20 a wing is quite standard too. A bite ensured a rich fried oil flavour, mixed with chicken goodness.

Fish & Chips. The good news? Real fish, real potato fries. A light layer of batter coated the fish and though it was a tad too dry, being so did make it crispy around the edges. If you're worried about biting into the fish fillet just to have a massive wave of oil invade your mouth, don't worry - the fish fillets are placed in a metal container with a rack so that the oil can drain. The bad news? For $4.90 you get 2 moderately sized pieces of fish, but just a handful of fries that you could possibly count with all your fingers and toes. Chip lovers out there beware! You ain't gonna get your high on those chips. Thank God for the tar tar sauce accompanying the fish. Goodness knows otherwise where you'd get any moisture out of this dish. Personally, I would probably not order the Fish & Chips ever again.

Meatballs have always garnered a mix reaction from me, whether consciously or subconsciously. I'm not a fan of grind-that-up-and-pack-it-together-to-make-a-patty/ball/fillet type of person. Despite the fact that the meatballs were processed, they still packed a punch on my first bite. But as I ate the 9th meatball, I regretted buying 15 ($8) of them. The meatballs are served with a generous dapple of strawberry jam, 4 huge potato chunks, and a lovely mushroom-cheese tasting creamy sauce. Surprisingly, the sweet strawberry jam complemented the meatballs very nicely. Who would have thought? Meat and Jam. Not me.

The potato chunks tasted like they were recently dug up from the soil, cleaned and prepared, and cut into 4. Do you know the difference between cheap potatoes and better ones? Cheap potatoes have this "Hi, I've still got part of the ground with me" taste, and are very yellow. These leave an aftertaste on their way down to your personal food incinerator (your stomach - spelled out for the clueless). Better potatoes (like those they serve in "Jack's Place"), have no such taste, and are geared towards a more pale yellowish-white colour. Needless to say, I wasn't very intrigued by the pile of potatoes on my plate.

Ikano Pte Ltd
IKEA : Making Room for Ideas
317 Alexandra Rd
Tel : 6474 0122