Ikea Restaurant in Beijing

January 3, 2008 - 11:25pm

Whew! With being mildly under the weather and furnishing a new apartment, I haven't had time to write a lengthy post yet this year. I did, however, make it out to Beijing's Ikea over the weekend. I had thought US IKEAs were crowded, but here I couldn't push a shopping cart 3 feet without hitting someone. (Had to resort to a yellow bag hooked on a dolly.)

Beijing's Ikea restaurant seats 700, possibly one of the largest Ikea restaurants in the world. The picture above shows only about 1/4 of the restaurant. We went at 3pm on a Saturday, and it was so packed many families were roaming around with their trays looking for seats. And while most people were enthusiastically chowing down on such un-Chinese specialties as herbed salmon and Swedish meatballs, there were stirfries available to appease the local palate. (Like how the McDonald's in Spain has gazpacho, and so on.)

What we ate at the restaurant (and what furniture we bought) isn't as important as what I found at the Swedish food market: vodka, for 86 yuan! That's at least 3 to 4 times cheaper than any bottle I've seen elsewhere. I also found some other Swedish goodies like fish roe, Wasa, and lingonberry jam that would (naturally) fit into our Chinese kitchen.