IKEA (ISRAEL)

We suspect that the only Ikea store in the world with a mezuzah on every door way is the Ikea in Tel Aviv. We all know Ikea, home of inexpensive kitchen and housewares, and fairly inexpensive everything else. We bought bookcases there strong enough to hold our oversize Talmud and Shulchan Aruch as well as the old, original (and non Zionist) Jewish Encyclopedia, a weighty set if ever there was one!

Our reason for writing, however, is to tout the cafeteria there. Under Mehadrin supervision, the kitchen serves dairy until 11:00am and then switches to meat and pareve only.

The food is very, very inexpensive, portions are quite large, and the food is actually really good. Sure, it is not gourmet, but, wowzers, is it good!

Four of us ate for well under $50. Our little grand daughter devoured the two hotdogs and fries on the children’s menu, along with real fruit juice. One of us had the soup of the day (available either in a bowl or in a round loaf of bread and a chef’s salad. The salad was huge! Drinks, by the way, are refillable. One of us had schnitzelonim (chicken fingers) served with green beans and french fries. We had the meat balls. After all, Ikea is famous for Swedish meat balls. The meat balls were delish. BUT- they were Jewish meat balls served in brown gravy and not what we expected. Oh, by the way, the chocolate mousse (pareve) is tam gan eden!

We have eaten there twice so far. The first time we had the schnitzelonim, and they were amazing. You have to bus your table, but so what? At those prices, who cares?

Frankly, we would go there just for lunch any time!