Ikea, Rhodes

The W and I believe we are infected with "Ikea Spores..."

What are Ikea Spores you ask?

Ikea Spores are little micro-organisms that make you happy when you come to Ikea. It makes you happy when you spend money at Ikea. It makes you happy with all things Ikea even if you've never had an interest in them before (for me it was looking at lamp shades and manchester), and it will make you happy thinking about coming back to Ikea in the near future.

The W and I have a hunch that the Ikea Spores are in the food - which always make us happy!!

On a serious note...back to the food...

What an ingenious idea Ikea have with their marketing to start your day off with a $3 breakfast of bacon, sausage, hash browns (mmmm!), egg, and grilled tomato or $7.50 for brunch/lunch of 15 Swedish meatballs with fries. It makes you think "What a bargain, I've already saved on lunch so I can spend more on furniture or lampshades" - he he he !!

As we all slept in, we missed out on breakfast and all agreed that the Ikea spores in us were saying "Must have Meatballs!!" - who are we to argue with spores.

The meatballs were gorgeous as usual. Soft and tender on the inside with a slight crispiness on the outside. I'm not sure what the gravy is? It tastes something between gravy and cheese sauce, not too heavy. With a side of freshly cooked golden fries and dollop of lingon berry sauce to complement them what a great way to start your shopping day!!

I also wondered how long the kitchen staff have worked there. The dude that shovels the meat balls on the plates always seem to get the correct amount with no signs of counting in his head. I've always hoped that I would score an extra meatball or two but thus far...no such luck :(

Drinks are self serve, and re-fillable. I was feeling a bit daring and went for the lingon berry soda. Tastes like cranberry juice only not as tart and with the fizziness. It's quite refreshing, but doesn't seem to taste the same as the lingon berry sauce that came with the meatballs. $1.95 for refillable drinks is a steal. They also have self serve cappuccino - and newly installed - hot chocolate. I had a glance on my way back from a refill at someone's hot chocolate - it looked really good. A definite try for our next visit :P

But why stop there when the cafeteria has a selection of meals/desserts available. Lobo opted for the Portuguese tart which was creamy/custardy as we would expect. The pastry was light and still quite crisp given that it was served chilled rather than room temp.
We also shared the Daim cake which tasted a lot lighter than what I expected from it's heavy chocolately appearance. The cake had a thin layer of chocolate spread in the centre with sprinkling of peanuts (I think??) topped with the famous Swedish chocolate coated toffee nuggets - a very good combo indeed!!

After spending $80 more than what we intended (oops!! the spores made me do it), as soon as you leave the checkout on your way out there in all its glory is another food store. So many interesting and tasty looking Swedish foods from Princess cake to frozen crayfish. The counter also serves $1 hot-dogs and $0.50 icecreams. Even though we've stuffed ourselves upstairs, at these prices who could resist not to get something extra? We did restrain ourselves and settled for the icecream. Ooh, and apparently there's an all you can eat crayfish festival on around October for $20/person :)

Since my last visit they've gone all fancy with a self serve icecream machine. You place the cone in a robotic arm, press the go button and it perfectly fills the cone - too bad you can't press it twice for a Mega-cone :P Although still very satisfying they have downgraded the waffle cone to a standard cone - but again, who can really complain - it's fifty cents!!

Have you got Ikea Spores?



Till next time...we eat!!

Shanks