Here's The One Meal You Have To Order From IKEA's Food Court Menu

There's no such thing as a quick errand at Swedish furniture mega-store IKEA. The chain has everything you could ever need for your home, and with an inventory like that stretching out over multiple floors, shoppers are bound to spend an entire day there, which also means they're bound to get hungry. Luckily, there's a famous food court in every location to satiate that hunger — in fact, it's the very reason IKEA food is so cheap. Instead of leaving the store, customers can eat right there, which helps them keep shopping. But when it comes to all the different things to know about the IKEA food court, the most important — especially when you're one of these customers — is what's actually worth ordering. Sure, everything's wallet-friendly, but what delivers the tastiest experience?

We ranked 11 IKEA food court items worst to best, and perhaps it's no surprise that the Swedish meatballs won the number-one slot. They are, after all, the best-known dish at IKEA and also one of the only dishes that reflects the store's Swedish roots, other than its "Stockholm salad" with salmon. These savory meatballs are simply reliable deliciousness, compared to lackluster options like a limp Caesar salad, stale potato pancakes, bland egg salad sandwich, and even the more flavorful garlic lemon cod. The meatballs have a perfect, tender texture, and really pop with the tart lingonberry jam that comes with them. Mashed potatoes and peas round out the great-value meal.

IKEA has been offering Swedish meatballs since 1985, so they've had time to both perfect this dish and build its sterling reputation. The food program at the store actually launched way back in the 1960s, but it was in the 1980s that Swedish chef Severin Sjöstedt created a recipe as tasty and authentic as it was affordable to serve up in large quantities. The meatballs are a mixture of beef and pork and include flavor and texture boosters like garlic, onion, and breadcrumbs, with a sauce combining cream, beef stock, and Dijon mustard. More recently, in 2015, IKEA introduced chicken and vegetarian meatballs, plus a plant-based variation in 2020. Along the way, other variations that have been available at places like Sweden's IKEA Museum have included salmon and moose. Today, one billion IKEA Swedish meatballs are sold each year.

This dish has reached household-name status, with people all around the world associating it with the massive chain store. For many people in different countries, they're an introduction to Swedish cuisine, and it must be a positive one, because Reddit threads, magazines, and blogs all feature dozens of copycat recipes. If you want to enjoy IKEA's Swedish meatballs at home, you can buy the real thing, since the company also sells them frozen, or you can learn to make traditional Swedish meatballs yourself, adding your own favorite sides.