Restaurant Review: Ikea Food Hall San Francisco, specifically the Ikea Cafe (will try others next time)

The Ikea Saluhall opened in San Francisco (5th and Market) back in April, and I've been inside Ikea before, but never visited the food hall. Well, I'm going in today, as I've read about it in both the SF Standard and SF Gate, and apparently it gets rave reviews... if you pay for the top-end entrees. Being a relatively poor guy, I want to see what the low end taste like. 

It's NOT great. 

Photo by Jueun Song on Unsplash

I went inside and walked around. The ground floor has 2 bars with food, and a soft-serve stand. As I don't drink and don't need a softserve, I headed upstairs... Only to find out that the elevators are back OUTSIDE. I had to walk up the stairs, yikes. 

Okay, got up to 2nd floor... Seems half of the food upstairs are vegan. I have no problem with vegan food, but they don't exactly come cheap. Fortunately, the lines to each are minimal, and choices are certainly eclectic... Vegan tacos, Sichuan noodles, open-faced vegan burger (made with Beyond Meat), mushroom nuggets... Indian street food curry, Algerian dish... But as I said, they ain't cheap. So I opted for the cheapest option... Ikea's own stuff. 

I was going to order the meatball, but in the end, I chose "pulled pork sandwich" with mac and cheese on the side, a diet pepsi, a regular hot dog, and a cinnamon roll, for about $12+tax. 

I think I made a mistake in choosing these items. 

Apparently so few people chose the pulled pork sandwich, they have to toast the brioche rolls from scratch, and that takes an extra five minutes. By the time I got the sandwich the rest of the items are cold (and the diet pepsi is warming up). 

This is what it looks like, BTW...

Pulled pork w/ mac and cheese,
hot dog, cinnamon bun, Pepsi
at Ikea Saluhall, San Francisco

The mac and cheese... tastes a little strange. The first few bites are okay, but the last half of it got a strange chemical taste to it I can't quite describe... a certain... funk? 

The sandwich itself... the roll is okay, it's toasted so the wet pulled pork didn't soak through, but they also squeezed quite a bit of liquid out of the meat so it's a little dry and thus, a bit short on flavor, mostly sweet, not much salt or spice. Pretty much tasteless. 

The hotdog was 6 inches long, and extremely thin. Like a fat-fountain-pen type of thickness, nowhere close to American hot dogs like Nathan's or Bar's or even Oscar Meyers. There's almost no snap to it, and when paired with tasteless hotdog bun, means there's also no flavor in the dogs. I ended up munching on the dogs alone, without the bun, and that made it slightly more palatable. I guess I could have tried to drown it with mustard and ketchup, but there's really no point to that. Sure, it's cheap, but Costco have no need to be concerned. They are are in no danger from Ikea dogs, regular, veggie, or plant versions. 

All in all, not fun to eat, but it does fill the stomach. Will have to go back and try the other places, even if they're vegan. 

Ikea Cafeteria: C+

Oh, and the cinnamon roll... It's tiny. While it's only 1.50, I should have just sprung for the cake. The rolls by that time is room temp and hardened up, sweetness barely showing, and icing no longer sweet.