$1.99 Chicken Meal at Ikea - Costa Mesa

IKEA has never been more blatant than now in recognizing that their cafeteria is basically their loss leader. A few weeks ago they effectively said, “To heck with the 99-cents for breakfast. On Mondays, it’s freakin’ free!”

As part of their embrace of the idea that cheap food brings in cheap people who buy cheap furniture, they’ve also discounted their roast chicken and mashed potato plate on Thursdays to $1.99. It must be said that I’ve never been compelled to try their chicken meal until now. But then it must also be said that before they started discounting the breakfast from $1.99 to 99-cents, I never gave IKEA’s food much credence to be edible.

The breakfast is, for the record, edible. While the eggs aren’t great (kind of curdled with a processed flavor), the potatoes are a good example of home fries and the bacon, well, it’s bacon.

And the chicken and mashed potato dish? I can honestly report that it is the best $1.99 chicken and mashed potatoes meal I’ve ever had that isn’t deep-fried and doled out of a fast-food drive-thru. The chicken is remarkably moist and remarkably flavorful, even if the predominant flavor is salt (cue Marge Simpson’s classic line of “You might say the secret ingredient is salt!”).

Before I came I actually brought a packet of Tapatio as insurance, but I never needed it. Besides, the sauce would’ve clashed with the mashed potato, which was everything mashed potato needed to be, creamy and hot, and made from what I believe are actual potatoes with bits of skin in it.

It’s also nice that you can request for any cut you like (white’s the way to go here) without an up-charge. It makes you almost forget that a whole rotisserie bird at Costco, which has always retailed at around 5 bucks, is probably the better deal. Cheapness is a trait that renders you blind sometimes.

Ikea
(714) 444-4532
1475 S Coast Dr
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

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