8 IKEA Food Court Entrées, Ranked Worst To Best

Everyone who shops at IKEA knows it can be an all-day outing, since you can't help looking at everything from furniture to sleek and affordable cookware sets. IKEA knows you'll get hungry and need to refuel while shopping, so it incorporated a food court in its stores early on. In fact, IKEA's food court dates back to the 1950s.

Just as the Swedish brand is known for affordable furniture and home goods, IKEA's food court is also known for its budget-friendly food. Its most famous dish is the Swedish meatballs, but it's not all about meatballs here. IKEA's food court actually has a pretty extensive menu, from salads to sweet treats, and multiple entrée options to choose from. The menu now caters to different dietary restrictions with pescatarian and plant-based options. To help you decide what to order the next time you visit IKEA, I ranked eight of its popular entrées from worst to best.

I had high expectations for IKEA's garlic lemon cod, but unfortunately this dish fell short. The cod wasn't flaky or tender. Instead, it was overcooked and dry, as well as tasting a little fishy. Instead of really tasting the garlic or lemon, all I could detect was that it was salty. I was hoping for a delicate, flaky cod, but this reminded me more of salted cod, the classic Portuguese comfort food. 

It wasn't a particularly good value, either. Compared to the salmon, the size is fairly small. The sides that the dish comes with are also not particularly interesting. The cod was served with mashed potato and peas. There was no gravy or any sauce on the mashed potato, so it also tasted rather dry compared to how the mashed potato is served with the meatball dishes. All in all, it was my least favorite of the entrées I tasted, and I would not get this again. 

It's not particularly Swedish, but IKEA serves chicken tenders, perhaps to appeal to the children shopping with their parents. The chicken tenders are served on top of a pile of french fries. You might think you can't go wrong with chicken tenders and fries, but unfortunately, the classic fried food at IKEA fell flat. The chicken was dry and the french fries were limp.

IKEA offers a three-piece chicken tender meal for $13.99, but since I'm also trying all the other dishes, I opted for the two-piece serving at $9.99. With enough ketchup and mayonnaise from the condiments bar, it's sufficient for a picky kid (or adult) who might not want to eat anything else on the menu. I liked it a little better than the overcooked cod, but I personally would not order it again. There are better choices on IKEA's menu in terms of taste, and if I just want something quick to fill my stomach, there are also cheaper options. 

On IKEA's website, this dish is listed as pasta with marinara sauce, with no mention of any other toppings. But when I visited my local IKEA in Burbank, California, it was offered with four pieces of meatballs. The addition of the meatballs certainly brought the ranking of this particular entrée up. It seems like the pasta you get when you order this could vary by location (the website photo shows cavatappi), but the pasta shape that came with my order was penne. 

As far as the pasta goes, it tasted like something you could make at home with dried pasta and jarred sauce you can find at any grocery store. The marinara sauce was a little watery and the flavor was pretty mild. I also think the pasta could use more sauce. That said, it was only $2.99 and it came with four meatballs, which are easily IKEA's most famous offering. Since it's a great value, this dish ranked higher on my list. It's the cheapest of all of the store's restaurant entrées, the taste is serviceable, and it's a dish that kids can easily enjoy. 

IKEA has expanded its vegetarian and vegan offerings in recent years, and the latest addition in this category is the falafel meatballs. They're made with chickpeas, zucchini, onions, and spices and served with a side of vegetable couscous and some garlic aioli. 

Now, the falafel doesn't really taste like the falafel you might be familiar with if you've visited your local Middle Eastern restaurants. In my opinion, they taste more like a bean burger patty, except with chickpeas. They don't really have the herbs that traditional falafel normally has, like fresh parsley. 

That said, these so-called "falafel" balls are not bad. They're a tad dry, but thankfully that's something that the dollop of garlic aioli on the plate can easily fix. While I wasn't particularly impressed by the falafel balls themselves, I did like the vegetable couscous that came with the entrée. As long as you're not expecting the flavors of traditional falafel here, this is a good plant-based option. Plus, it's only $4.99 for the plate of eight balls and couscous, making it one of the more affordable choices.

Another fish option at IKEA is the salmon filet with a veggie medallion. The salmon is topped with a creamy lemon and dill sauce (which IKEA also sells as a prepackaged sauce). In addition to the veggie medallion (which is made with potatoes, broccoli, leek, onion, and cheese), this entrée also comes with peas. 

The salmon was pretty tender, flaky, and not dry. My main complaint with the salmon was that it was a little fishy, but overall I still think it's a much better fish option than the cod. I also enjoyed the creamy and flavorful lemon dill sauce that's poured on top of the salmon. The potato-based vegetable medallion was also enjoyable and works nicely as an accompaniment to the salmon. As for the peas, well, they're the same peas that make an appearance on a lot of IKEA's plates. They're better peas than a lot of cafeteria peas, but nothing to write home about.

Vegans and vegetarians can now enjoy IKEA's famous Swedish meatballs, or at least a version of them. Known as plant balls at IKEA, these morsels are made with pea protein, oats, potatoes, onion, and even apples.

Do they taste the same as the regular Swedish meatballs at IKEA? Well, no, not really. You can see that the color is darker than the regular meatballs. The taste and texture are also different from the original version, but they're still a worthy substitute. I've had IKEA's previous version of the plant-based balls, and those were spongy and tasted like vegetables. This new recipe has a firmer texture and a more meaty, savory flavor. I don't think you'd be able to tell that they're plant-based if you didn't know beforehand. 

Just like the Swedish meatballs, the plant-based meatballs are served with mashed potato, gravy, and lingonberry jam. Once you enjoy the plant balls with gravy and lingonberry jam, they taste close enough to the real thing. 

I was pleasantly surprised to see chile verde chicken on the menu, as this dish was not listed online. This is a roast skin-on chicken dish, served with rice and black beans. This entrée was also supposed to come with plantains, but sadly, the IKEA location I went to was out of plantains at the time, so they substituted a veggie medallion instead. 

The cut of chicken that I got was a bone-in chicken thigh. The chicken itself was pretty tender and juicy, and the sauce had a nice flavor. The sauce isn't spicy at all, but it's flavorful, savory, and lightly tangy. The texture of the rice and beans was also good, though it would be nice to have more of the chile verde sauce on the rice. The one downside is that the black beans were rather bland and could really use more seasoning, but otherwise I enjoyed this dish. I think it would be even better with plantains. 

The first place winner should not surprise you. Yes, it's the famous IKEA Swedish meatballs. According to IKEA, the meatballs were first launched in 1985 and have since become closely associated with the brand. The dish makes perfect sense, since meatballs are perhaps Sweden's most famous food, and IKEA is a Swedish company. Fortunately, the customers in the U.S. have also embraced these little balls. 

The meatballs are a blend of beef and pork, plus other ingredients like breadcrumbs, egg, and onion. Unlike Italian meatballs, these Swedish meatballs have a softer and springier consistency. The soft meatballs are topped with a generous serving of savory gravy, creamy mashed potato, and the sweet lingonberry jam. The jam is essential to make the meal on-brand for IKEA, as lingonberries are one of the foods you can only find in Sweden. All the components of this dish work really well together, which is unsurprising, since this is the way it's traditionally served in Sweden, after all. Perhaps it's partially the nostalgia, but these meatballs are hard to beat.  

IKEA's menu might be slightly different from location to location. For this ranking, I taste-tested IKEA's entrées that are available at the Burbank, California location, as it's the location most convenient to me. I only focused on dishes that can be considered entrées. Therefore, the salad, wrap, and egg sandwich were not considered for this comparison, as the size of the wrap was too small compared to the entrées that I included here. I also only considered the food served at IKEA's restaurant section, as opposed to the store's bistro that serves pizza and hot dogs.

The dishes were ranked primarily based on taste, not just of the main component, but also the sides and how the dish works as a whole. For the most part, the price wasn't a major factor. However, if the dishes were tied in their flavor ranking, I ranked the one that was a better value higher. All prices are accurate at the time of writing.