But I Wanted to Be Grumpy
Written: Dec 19 '00 (Updated Dec 19 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Better than I ever expected from an in-store restaurant
Cons: It is, after all, an in-store restaurant
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| Sloucho's Full Review: IKEA |
Being compelled to shop is probably the only thing that can make me grumpier than being hungry. So why, you may wonder, do I make a point of fasting on the days when my wife insists that I accompany her on a shopping trip?
Because I want to be grumpy. I want to be testy and caustic and embittered and generally unpleasant enough to make my wife think twice about making me shop with her again. It's what men do. At least, it's what whipped men do.
And I've become pretty accomplished at it. When we went shopping for headboards on Saturday at Ikea, I was a certifiable jerk. Ikea was our third stop. And while most of my contemptible behavior could be attributed to my desire to be contemptible, I feel compelled to point out that some of it was a result of wasting my time looking at the shoddy, unstable, and occasionally downright fragile railing systems that Ikea was trying to con me into buying for my bed.
Finally, my wife had had enough out of me. She insisted that we eat in the in-store restaurant. That struck me as an excellent idea for two reasons. The first was that anything--even eating in an in-store restaurant--beats shopping for a headboard. And the second was that I expected the food to be terrible and knew that my grumpiness, already off the scale, would be compounded exponentially by a case of indigestion. As I approached the restaurant and smelled the thickly watery smell of truly bland food, I told myself that I would not be forced into shopping again for at least an entire year.
As soon as we got into line, however, my attitude changed dramatically. I was astonished to see that everything was so cheap. There was Chicken Marsala with wild rice and steamed broccoli for $5.95, poached salmon with russet potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower for $6.95, and even a kid's meatball and french fry plate for $1.95. Now, as a fully functioning tightwad (the kind of tightwad who doesn't see the need for a headboard when there's already a wall right there), my attitude about how bad the food was going to be started to change as soon as I saw how little it was going to cost me.
My wife and I ordered the chicken, the salmon, and the $1.95 meatball plate (we couldn't justify skipping the purportedly "famous" meatballs). We also snagged a bowl of lumpily creamy (or creamily lumpy) chicken soup, a couple of cold rolls and iced tea. There was actually unsweetened iced tea available! Sure, it was instant--and therefore worse than the water that I usually drink at places that serve only presweetened iced tea--but it was incredibly validating to see that the restaurant acknowledged unsweetened iced tea as a viable beverage choice.
As for the food, I am not trying to damn it with faint praise when I say that it did not make me the least bit ill. When is the last time you got Chicken Marsala with steamed broccoli and wild rice for $5.95 and weren't ill? The broccoli was perfectly tasteless--but green and reasonably crisp and presumably nutritious. The wild rice was almost certainly Uncle Ben's out of a box. But before all of you gourmands get your hackles up, remember that there are lots of us who are such culinary klutzes as to be quite capable of botching Uncle Ben's rice out of a box.
The butter-lemon sauce used for the salmon was precisely as unimaginative as the pepperless brown roux provided for dipping the meatballs into, but since I'm the kind of guy who wouldn't take the time to make a butter-lemon sauce or a bland brown roux, I was appreciative of both. The fries that came with the meatballs were maybe half a degree warmer than the room temperature rolls available next to the cash register. But we had only been interested in the meatballs (which were fine, if tiny), so that seemed a minor detail.
The creamy chicken soup was a little over-the-top for my taste. It was so viscous that it seemed as if we were eating a chicken pot pie without the crust. After I choked down my glass of instant iced tea, I went back to refill my glass with a lingonberry soda just because I didn't know when my next opportunity to try lingonberry soda would come up. I guess it tasted like lingonberries (whatever those are), but can only say with certainty that it was neither overly carbonated nor offensively syrupy. (Give me a few more weeks on epinions and I'll be able to tell you something about the nose and finish of all sorts of carbonated beverages.)
Once we had finished our meal, I found myself to be--quite in spite of myself--in rather a good mood. I've tried to steam broccoli and have never steamed it very well. I've tried to make instant rice that has turned out too gooey or too dry. I've cooked chicken and salmon and have consistently failed to get around to making the sauces I know they need. We paid just over $15 for our meal. I'm certain that since it would have taken me at least a couple of tries to get the meal right in my kitchen, I could not have done it more cheaply at home.
All in all, the meal was satisfying enough to make me glad that we stopped in Ikea.
The headboards, though, were a complete waste of time.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Sloucho
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Mike Davis
Location: Philadelphia
Reviews written: 199
Trusted by: 248 members
About Me:
Read my reviews in order to heal the sick and control the weather. Seriously.
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