At least no assembly is needed on this deal
The cafeteria staff at the Emeryville IKEA possesses a kind patience, the likes I’ve which I’ve never seen before and doubt I’ll ever encounter again. As a hundred or so of us rushed to line up well before they opened up the annual Summer Solstice Celebration $12.99 All-You-Can-Eat Smorgasbord, the staff calmly placed the finishing touches on their herring-heavy buffet. A man yelled across the crowd and the cafeteria, demanding to be sold a ticket. I winched at his loud aggression, but when the IKEA employee approached, clad in her Swedish yellow and blue uniform, she was inexplicably beaming.
“It’s the best time of the year!” one of her colleagues announced.
Annually, the Swedish furniture emporium hosts a buffet meal of the cafeteria’s most popular offerings. I’d never attended one of these discount dinners before but apparently the event is hotly anticipated and draws repeat crowds of meatball enthusiasts at IKEA locations throughout the globe. As a relatively regularly Emeryville IKEA shopper, I went to Friday’s night’s Summer Solstice Celebration Smorgasbord (SSCS), anticipating, for lack of a better phrase, a food fight.
My low expectations were based on years of IKEA shopping experiences. Those of us on a budget have navigated not only the complex twists and turns of this big box chain, but faced the agony of attempting to assemble our purchases once home. The notoriously crowded store, in which shoppers drag multiple generations of family members along to select an end table that will fall apart at the slightest hint of humidity, has famously set the scene of many a meltdown. There’s even an episode of “30 Rock” about a relationship’s ability (or lack thereof) to survive a trip to IKEA. But still, we shop. The pull of the umlaut-laden product names is too strong to deny. IKEA’s slightly sleek, slightly European aesthetic and unspeakably affordable price points have drawn me since my college dorm days — but the store’s food offerings have never held much magic.
Clearly for some, those legendary meatballs — sold frozen in bulk at checkout stands — are a delicious delicacy, despite their involvement in a since-resolved 2013 European horse meat scandal. And the prospect of scoring unlimited meatballs (over the span of approximately one hour), not to mention shrimp salad and strawberry cake, is too good to pass up.
The SSCS was not the “food fight” I was expecting. The store had sold only 120 tickets for the 4:30 p.m. seating and 150 for the 6:30 p.m. seating, so at worst, one had to wait in the buffet line behind 100 people. Our queue was formed into a zigzag, as if we were all waiting to board a roller-coaster. Sure we lined up annoyingly early to score that slice of salmon on a paper plate as fast as possible — but we did so in a civilized fashion. If only we could be this well-behaved when attempting to assemble the $249 Björksnäs dresser with a loved one.
No, the big letdown of the SSCS was that it was basically just a bunch of regular IKEA cafeteria food — and really only the Euro-highlights — for slightly less than full price. IKEA’s cafe doesn’t break the bank as it is. Despite multiple servings of salmon slices and gravy-topped meatballs with lingonberry sauce, no one was really pulling a financial fast one over on IKEA’s food team. Even if you filled up a tray full of slightly Scandinavian fast food twice, you were still getting about $12.99 worth of product.
Some people went a step further and used IKEA’s mobile push carts. Similar to luggage carts available in an airport baggage claim, these carts could hold three trays piled high with food all at once. But really, if anyone was going to take this all-you-can-eat SSCS seriously, they could have just purchased IKEA brand Tupperware — available downstairs for practically nothing — and survived on cold herring and Swiss cheese cubes for a week.
First-come, first-served cafeteria seating never really filled up, despite some diners saving window seats in advance. I’m not sure why the window seats were particularly coveted anyway. Other than the whipping Swedish and American flags ceremoniously affixed to parking lot flag poles, IKEA’s cafeteria windows looked out onto a freeway. The venue’s hanging pendant lamps, however, no doubt pulled from IKEA’s own stock, provided a warm light. The ambiance was clean. A plastic flower, its price tag still attached, adorned my table for one. The IKEA Summer Solstice Celebration Smorgasbord wasn’t the meatball mess I expected, but it wasn’t a particularly glorious celebration, either.
Clearly for some, those legendary meatballs — sold frozen in bulk at checkout stands — are a delicious delicacy.