Swedish Meatballs & Chicken Wings @ IKEA Restaurant & Cafe. Tebrau JB

IKEA, the furniture shop from Sweden finally opened its doors in JB last week after 10 years of on again, off again news.



Johoreans greeted IKEA Tebrau with a tremendous welcome - all roads leading to IKEA were gridlocked and still hasn't letup 😂



Got here before 11am on a Monday morning and there were already queues at the restaurant & cafe. I joined in the queue lo 😂 Many people headed straight for the restaurant before going to browse the furniture (or head home). Some people come to IKEA just for the food.



Today, we tried the two most popular items on the menu - Swedish meatballs and fried chicken wings. We will try the others like steak and salmon in future visits 😄



Reached the front of the meatball counter after about 30 minutes in the queue, which is quite reasonable.



Next stop, the fried chicken wings counter which is self served.



My timing so good lor... they brought out a freshly fried tray of golden brown chicken wings just as I reached the counter. So lucky 😄



Finding a seat was easy as there was plenty in the sprawling restaurant - but, this was a Monday morning before lunch peak, so I am not sure about the weekend.



There are more seats at the north facing side (with large windows facing Jalan Harmonium).



Looking out of the large window, we can see the giant IKANO mall under construction. More good things are coming to this part of JB 😄 More traffic jams also 🚗🚕🚙🚓🚚🚛🚐🚜 (yes, tractors are street legal on Malaysian roads).



The meatballs come with a scoop of soft mashed potato and slathered with cream sauce and a dollop of lingonberry jam (price RM15 for a small serving of 15 meatballs). That's a lot of meatballs even for a grown man - wish IKEA Tebrau had smaller 5-meatball servings like they do in Kuala Lumpur.



The meatball was so flavourful - it was savoury sweet beefy with subtle herbal notes. It had a slight spring to the bite and there were crunchy bits inside like cartilage. It was moist inside though not very juicy.

The mild savoury sweet cream sauce, slightly zesty sourish sweet lingonberry jam and savoury sweet mashed potato complemented the meatballs well.

This is a likable dish.



The golden brown chicken wings (price RM16.50 for 4 pieces). Wish they could sell the chicken wings on a per piece basis like they do in KL.



The golden brown outside was crisp while inside, the meat was tender with steamy hot juices. I like it that the wings were not overly greasy.

The fried chicken wings were mainly savoury salty in a flat way.



The queues stretched to outside the restaurant as we were leaving 😱



Heading home straight after eating? Yeah 😜



I have a bad habit of picking up an ice cream before checking out of IKEA 😄



After paying at the cashier (80 sen per serving), s/he will hand you a token which you will use to get your ice cream at the self serve dispenser.



Cold sweet soft serve vanilla in a sweet crunchy crisp biscuit cone.

Nice.



I guessed I overindulged. The rest of the day I felt thirsty and an uneasy bloatedness. That day, I wasn't ready for dinner until about 9pm.





Restaurant name: Restaurant & Cafe at IKEA
Address: 33, Jalan Harmonium 23/13, Taman Desa Tebrau, 81100 Johor Bahru
GPS: 1°33'08.8"N 103°47'46.2"E | 1.552454, 103.796163
Hours: 10:00am - 10:00pm (closes at 11:00pm on Fri & Sat)

Halal

Date visited: 27 Nov 2017

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