ikea

We decided, in the name of science, to order all the possible non-dessert items that you could have for breakfast. That with a cup of coffee rang in for less than $6.

There are, of course, multiple options. A small and regular breakfast. Swedish pancakes. And a cinnamon roll.

The small and regular breakfasts are exactly the same, except the regular breakfast has these french toast dipping sticks. The dipping sticks, of course, are deep-fried, but surprisingly french-toast-like. The little potato chunks are also deep-fried, and also surprisingly delicious, even cold. The eggs are perfectly scrambled, not dried out at all from the steam tray, and seasoned. The bacon was the only disappointment, being smoked and just okay.

The buckwheat pancakes are folded into wedges and served with whipped cream and lingonberries on the side. These are good, but the steam table is not as kind to them as it is the breakfast -- I'm certain they're better right off the griddle.

And then there is the cinnamon bun. It's not as gooey and luscious as some, but it's still sweet and a bit sticky and perfectly okay with coffee.

I love the fact that your food comes on porcelain plates, your coffee in a porcelain cup, your flatware made of some sort of real metal. And the bargain hunter in me loves the fact that you can get a perfectly decent breakfast, quite possibly better than your neighborhood place, for $2.

There are two ways to get meatballs at IKEA. The one we all know about is in the IKEA Restaurant.

In the restaurant, you can get small (10, $4.29), regular (15, $4.99) or large (20, $5.99) portions of meatballs in cream gravy, meatball-sized whole red new potatoes, with a spot of lingonberry sauce. These come served on a porcelain plate, that you can eat in the pleasant restaurant with real metal flatware at a clean table while sipping on free refills of pop or coffee. There's salt and pepper, cholula hot sauce, ketchup, and even little flip cards on your table with the answers to all your questions -- or at least, all the questions that IKEA thinks that you will ask. Sit by the huge windows and watch the weather coming in, or planes taking off and landing. It's all very civilized. The restaurant even provides tray carts, so you can easily push all your trays to your table without spilling them or doing a balancing act.

You used to be able to get a meatball fix right now at the IKEA Bistro. The Bistro is the little fastfood area after you pay for all your new belongings, and the fact that it's called a bistro is a sad joke. It's dirty, crowded, noisy -- really everything the restaurant is not.

But, you could buy a cup of meatballs for $1, along with 50 cent hot dogs, cinnamon buns, frozen yougurt, and some strange pizza empanada sort of thing. The $1 cup is small, but it probably had 6-8 meatballs in it (sorry, I didn't count). You got a toothpick to eat them with.

Finally, you can buy meatballs frozen in the Swedish Food Market, conveniently located next to the Bistro. A 2.5 lb bag is $7.99, and you can buy some instant cream gravy mix for just a little more. Lingonberry sauce, I'm sure, is also available.