“Local” Lunch At IKEA

After a single bite, I realized I had ordered the wrong entree at IKEA. The ​“veggie balls” were a blank slate: a mush of chickpeas, carrots, peppers, and other veggies I usually enjoy, mashed and blended until they amounted to something almost as thoroughly bland as the cauliflower rice I got on the side.

I found myself in a maze of minimalist furniture and minimally-flavored food, as my colleagues Karen Ponzio (KP), Nora Grace-Flood, Dereen Shirnekhi, and I tried to test the limits of an assignment to review a ​“local restaurant.” 

The Long Wharf IKEA has clones around the world. Could it also be, as KP posited, a ​“New Haven destination”? And could a big-box store known for self-assembly bed frames and book shelves also be a place worth dining out on meatballs and mac and cheese?

The four of us gathered at the vast and fairly populated cafeteria in an effort to find out. (KP managed to pick up some kitchen supplies, too.)

We were all familiar with the store’s vast furniture section — a one-way labyrinth that greets you with elaborately-staged rooms and evolves into a colorless warehouse of uniformly-packaged furniture. 

We quickly noticed a parallel in the cafeteria’s layout. The four of us collected the components of our lunch assembly-line style, snaking through a cordoned line to choose between a handful of sweets, salads, and hot food options.

Pre-plated salads sat in see-through cubbies. We selected desserts from baskets with our tongs. A cafeteria employee served us the hot food, pairing each protein with the recommended side. 

The setup — along with the available food options — reminded us of a school lunchroom. We emerged from the line balancing pre-assembled salads, scoops of mac and cheese, gloops of mashed potatoes, clusters of identical ​“meat” balls, and an array of crisply-sliced cakes on our trays. Everything was relatively inexpensive, thanks especially to a 50 percent-off deal on entrees; our four meals, as well as salads, drinks, and desserts to share, cost $52 in total. 

Among my plant-based selections, only a mildly tangy and highly creamy lemongrass aioli provided any meaningful form of flavor. And a vegan cinnamon roll with so much frosting and fluff that I found myself double-checking the ingredients.

My colleagues, meanwhile, were mostly satisfied. They offered special praise for the french fries, the dollar-fifty coffee, and a chocolate cake that reminded them of a Snickers candy bar. The peas, Nora quipped, were the ​“M‑V-Peas of the meal.” The mac and cheese, KP observed, was exactly the kind of thing her son would have ordered as a kid after a stressful day of traveling. The group did recommend avoiding what I’m told was a wildly tasteless scoop of mashed potatoes.

KP recalled the days when a broader array of department stores existed in the area, from Caldor’s to Bradlees to Ames. ​“All of those places are gone,” she said. ​“Now, you have Walmart and Target.”

Usually, KP added, ​“Big stores give me anxiety. Not this one.” The one-way maze format makes the store feel more manageable, she surmised, because there’s only one direction to walk in.

“It’s freedom from choice,” Nora agreed. She observed that the IKEA menu is relatively limited, too, despite the sprawling size of the cafeteria. 

In a consolidating retail landscape, IKEA is distinct for its relatively narrow design scope, at least compared to places like Walmart or Amazon. Most of the furniture is angular and simple, and either black or white or a specific ​“light wood” color. The store is also uniquely obvious about the fact that all of its products are mass produced — a fact laid bare in the warehouse section of the store, where any given chair or cabinet is cloned in identical cardboard boxes. At the cafeteria, it’s clear from the start that the cinnamon bun you’ll soon be pulling apart is no different from the cinnamon buns packed six-to-a-bag and piled in the warehouse downstairs. 

To me, this uniformity feels like the opposite of New Haven, a city of DIY traffic signs, bike-powered composting, abandoned buildings turned public art, and food so much better than anything sold at IKEA. So I admittedly cringed when KP described how the Swedish furniture outpost has become one of the city’s best-known landmarks among people she meets in passing: ​“Oh, New Haven? I’ve been to the IKEA there.”

It may be that IKEA is inextricable from our city. KP, Dereen, and I determined that each of us — and so many of the people we know — have some IKEA furniture in our homes, acquired either secondhand or straight from the store. It didn’t matter that we each have different styles and opinions on IKEA’s sleek aesthetic.

Even Nora, who initially insisted she didn’t actually own anything from the store because she isn’t ​“an IKEA person,” eventually walked back that statement after encountering some familiar-looking stuffed animals and candles.

Though she doesn’t consider herself a devoted customer, she does have plenty of memories in the store. She told us that she and her friends used to come to this very IKEA in high school, snacking on Swedish meatballs and then wandering through the intricately arranged rooms. 

IKEA would be ​“a great place to hold someone hostage,” observed Dereen. ​“It feels like a compound” with ​“a million kitchens, a million bathrooms.”

“I remember my brother shoving me around in one of those warehouse carts,” Nora reminisced. ​“I think I got beat up a lot at IKEA.”

KP recalled once going to IKEA as she was trying to decide what color to repaint her bedroom. She found unexpected inspiration in one of the store’s staged bedrooms.

“There was a bedroom that was painted plum purple. I said, That’s the purple I want.” KP went to Home Depot, gathered ​“as many purple swatches as I could find,” and came back to IKEA to find the best match. 

“You took the one thing you couldn’t actually buy,” said Dereen.