Ikea has opened its first high-street restaurant in the UK. There’s not a flat-pack in sight – but a hotdog is 85p and a children’s pasta dish with tomato sauce (plus soft drink and piece of fruit) is 95p. A nine-piece full English will set you back £3.75, while a serving of their famous meatballs (with mash, peas, cream sauce and lingonberry jam) is £5.50. Vegetarians are amply catered for. It’s open 12 hours a day (and that may be extended further to enable dinner). There’s free wifi and somewhere to charge your phone. Even better, there is no music.
It’s not pretending to be anything it isn’t. And in an age where even the supermarket sandwich tries to pose as something you’d find in an upmarket Italian deli, a lack of pretension is a commendable thing
This is all in central London – west London (Hammersmith) no less. Where else can you eat at these prices? Maybe the Tesco café, though it isn’t quite that cheap. Greggs perhaps, but there is often nowhere to sit down. Wetherspoons and McDonald’s certainly, which is why they are so enduringly popular (Maccy D’s celebrated its 50th anniversary in the UK this month). But finding anywhere else where you can sit in the warmth and eat hot and filling food without breaking the bank increasingly feels like a needle in a haystack endeavour.
Next door to Ikea’s revamped Hammersmith furniture store, the new opening is unique in being the chain’s first standalone restaurant. They have more planned, in London and beyond. Apparently 1,000 customers walked through the door on the first day, and you can see why. The space is a bit austere, but it’s functional. School canteen vibes. It’s not pretending to be anything it isn’t. And in an age where even the supermarket sandwich tries to pose as something you’d find in an upmarket Italian deli, a lack of pretension is a commendable thing. At Ikea you can enjoy two loaded nacho hotdogs followed by a Daim cake and somewhere to plonk your bottom, all for less than a sandwich at the M&S down the road (‘Yule spiced’ Irish beef sarnie anyone?).
London may well have one of the best restaurant scenes in the world. Innovative. Trendy. But the number of establishments where you can have slap-up grub on the cheap dwindles by the day. It’s incredibly sad. Yes, a meal out is a treat. But sometimes you just need to fill your belly when you’re on the run and didn’t have time to make your sandwiches in the morning. Those hotdogs are a case in point. I have had the Thuringer Bratwurst with potato salad and caramelised onions (£24) at Fischer’s in Marylebone. I liked it. But sometimes you don’t want a Würstchen flavoured with marjoram. You want one of those campfire frankfurters that came out of a tin. And a city of London’s size should surely be able to afford us the choice.
I’ll provoke howls of outrage from the restaurant industry in writing this, I know. Rents are sky-high, they’ll justifiably point out. Quality ingredients cost money. I know all of this. But here’s the rub: sometimes no-frills is fine. Maybe we need a few more establishments willing to serve up bog-standard sausages in a white finger bun with supermarket own-brand ketchup and mustard on top. Then they won’t need to charge more than a few pounds.
And I know it’s possible because I’ve done the sums. A few years ago, fancying myself an entrepreneur, I opened a little coffee kiosk. No sooner had the shutters opened than lockdown closed us down again and that was that, but on my menu was PG Tips tea and Nescafe coffee. The food offering was toast, with butter or Marmite or jam. For something sweet, iced finger buns. I’ve written in defence of instant coffee in these pages before. Nothing wrong with the stuff. Not everywhere needs to be selling the most luxurious espresso-based variety for £3.50 a cup. Not everyone wants that. Personally, when I get a coffee in the morning – particularly in winter – I’m getting it 50 per cent for the caffeine boost and 50 per cent per cent for something to warm me up. I couldn’t care less whether it was single origin, roasted Colombian or out of a jar. And having crunched the numbers, it is possible to sell a hot cup of tea or instant coffee for £1.50 and still turn a profit in 2024. At Ikea a cappuccino is a very fair £1.75.
Is this Stockholm syndrome? Possibly. Maybe I shouldn’t be this grateful for a school dinner in adulthood. But I salute Ikea. I see nothing good in a restaurant sector where there’s only one thing on the menu: luxury. People deserve choice. The food at Ikea isn’t amazing, but it’s not bad at all. And without the Ikeas of this world we are fast removing from the scene anywhere where low or even averagely paid people can go for a nourishing meal, all simply to cater for the metropolitan foodies who often seem to forget that restaurants should be within everyone’s reach. Yes, it’s fine to live to eat. But we also need to eat to live.
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