“We all know that by staying here it’ll be a good high this year
So what’s the use to staying there if you’ve got no use for time
The fitness coast is growing near
The shores they don’t stay blond all year
The continent moves with growing fears
Its all for expensive lawn”

— “Date with Ikea”, Pavement, off the 1997 album Brighten the Corners

The Ikea in Portland had been open for a little under two weeks when I dropped by on a Sunday evening. My wife was on an extended stay in the oncology wing at the Sunnyside Kaiser Permanente, and since we are moving to a new house soon and there was no internet access at the hospital, I figured I’d shoot up I-205 and score a printed catalog so she could fete her compulsive shopping behaviors from the safe confines of her hospital bed.

My first mistake was to go to Ikea.

I had somewhat fond memories of my last visit, when we braved the drive up I-5 to Renton a few years ago to hit the Seattle-area Ikea. We picked up a load of furniture in flat boxes, some things which over the years have been relegated to erstwhile and forgotten nooks and crannies throughout our house (and yard and garage), or items which have simply been thrown away. I do enjoy the kitchen items, though (best colander ever).

But I had visions of my hyper-efficient meatball plate I had procured in the sterile Ikea cafeteria. 15 perfectly round balls of meat, 126 grams of boiled red bliss potatoes, topped with 60mL of strangely creamy brown gravy, and accompanied on the side by 22mL grams of ligonberry sauce. An assembly that existed as a shining paragon of the Ikea philosophy: fleeting, throwaway uber-productivity that permeates every umlaut-bestowed line of build-it-yourself furniture. A cheap, quick crack cocaine hit, the equivalent of a power pop one-hit wonder, here today, gone tomorrow…the Harvey-Danger’s-Flagpole-Sitta of culinary experiences.

The route to the Portland Ikea is trepidatious. One wrong turn off the Airport Way access road and you’ll find yourself on the way to the Dalles or some random Comfort Inn or the Airport long-term parking lot. After nearly taking all of these wrong turns — and flipping several, extremely illegal U-turns — I made my way to Cascade Station, only to find the Ikea overrun with lecherous cretins collectively paying homage to the great cobalt Jesus.

The parking lot was full, and those late to the party (and this was nearly 7pm) were being diverted to one of many makeshift dirt parking lots that rimmed the periphery of the Ikea expanse. Flaggers wearing bright orange vests expedited the flow of traffic into these cattle yards. It had the feel of the county fairgrounds parking lot before a Monsters of Rock (or Ozzfest) mega-concert.

After walking nearly a half mile, I now found myself amongst the flocks of ebullient minions. These were pilgrims on a hajj to fulfill some perverse post-consumerism wet dream.

I was saluted by these colorful, flowing Ikea flags. This lent an air of diplomatic fanfare to the occasion, much like as if I was visiting the United Nations.

As you enter, you are presented with a couple options. Take the escalator to start the “tour”, or deposit your kid at the brat bank, where you’ll be given a pager in exchange for your first born. You’ll be able to wander aimlessly throughout the Ikea showroom knowing your child is accounted for. The pager is a nice touch — if little Johnny accidentally impales himself with the disassembled leg of a MAMMUT children’s polypropylene table, you’ll be the first to know.

On the top floor awaits the Ikea cafeteria. Presumably it’s situated at the mouth of the showroom so as to suggest that you’ll need the sustenance in order to brave the long, winding, Canterbury-ish journey on which you’re about to embark.

As you can see, the cafeteria was overflowing with hordes of angry consumo-bots eager to get their lingonberry on. It was seriously longer than the Space Mountain lines I used to encounter at Disneyland as a child. My meatball fetish would have to wait, as there was no way on earth I was going to return to my wife at the hospital 2 hours later just because I needed a round meat fix. Maybe, if she was still on her morphine drip, but ever since she stopped riding the snake her concept of place and time had regretfully returned.

I did manage to snap a couple shots of a section of the menu, and a placard on a table bragging about a 99 cent breakfast. Amazing.

I asked about the catalogs. They won’t get their shipment of catalogs for a few weeks. This amounted to a wasted trip.

The saving grace in this case is that Ikea also features a small snack shop at the exit (with much shorter lines).

I picked up a $0.99 chocolate bar, mostly for the packaging (and the awesome way the Swedish spell “milk chocolate”)…

a $.50 hot dog…

and 2 cups of meatballs for $1 each. A dollar!

Here’s a closeup of the snack bar menu.

Each one dollar cup of meatballs contained 5 meatballs in brown gravy, with a single toothpick speared into the very top ball o’ meat.

These were not good. The meatballs were incredibly overcooked, and the bottoms were flattened and nearly burnt from the sheetpan on which they undoubtedly sat too long. This gave the lower half of each meatball the mouth feel of particle board. The long past-prime gravy had a consistency not unlike custard. A custard that had been made from coffee brewed from mop water infused with a nondescript spice profile (cardamom?). Despite my firm and unwavering adherence to my usual “No Meatball Left Behind” policy, I didn’t finish them all.

As I made the ignoble walk of shame back to my car in the dirt overflow lot, I couldn’t help but notice how the Cascade station MAX tracks intersected the pedestrian walkway with an aura of nonchalance that belied the fact that tons of metal — capable of killing large mammals at low speeds — regularly shuttled past this very spot with punctual regularity. I fear for the poor shlub, freshly sated with a recent over-indulgent orgy of consumerism, and logy from a few dozen meatballs and a cinnamon bun, who might get flattened thin as the box for that BESTÅ modular entertainment unit he was carrying back to his car.