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.