Ikea’s Food Hall May Be Dying, But Its Swedish Meatball Class Gave Me Life

There are 2 types of Ikea people: Those who spell for nan assemble-yourself furniture frames and bookcases, and those who spell for nan Swedish meatballs, soft arsenic Ping-Pong balls, doused successful cream sauce and flanked by fluorescent greenish peas, mashed potatoes, and tangy lingonberry sauce. For $4.99, they are nan centerpiece for an iconic Ikea cafeteria feast.

And now, only successful San Francisco, there’s a 3rd type of Ikea person. The type who goes location to make meatballs — astatine a people offered by Cookery Skola, nan Ikea cooking school. I had to wonder: Who are these Ikea-meatball-making people? So I signed up.

It’s been almost 2 years since Ingka Centres — nan Stockholm-based group that develops and operates Ikea stores — opened an outlet connected mid-Market. In nan outpouring of 2024, it opened nan adjacent Saluhall, a supposedly blase “Nordic spin” connected nan American nutrient court. This eager task aimed to go an anchor not conscionable for struggling mid-Market but for San Francisco itself. Saluhall has 2 floors, 3 cocktail bars, and vegan-centric vendors. A twelvemonth in, it besides has ongoing vacancies, a batch of bad press, and 1 caller presence — nan decidedly non-vegan Smish Smash burgers. 

Tucked connected nan 2nd floor, location is besides a cooking school. It’s squeaky-clean, pinch stainless alloy and induction stoves — theoretically cleanable for nan 300 cardinal yearly Ikea customers who nan concatenation says spell to nan shop strictly for nan food. (This includes my mediate aged-mom friend Samantha, who went nan different time for meatballs while precocious connected gummies — apparently an yearly contented pinch a pal.)

In total, Ikea customers devour one billion meatballs a year: veggie balls, chickenhearted balls, plant-based balls, and even, successful nan Swedish motherland, moose balls. So Ingka Centres wagered that if group spell to Ikea to eat, why wouldn’t they spell to Ikea to cook?

Despite a robust calendar of events, from happy hours and resistance brunches to trivia nights and day raves, Saluhall is empty, too. There is 1 mates sipping beers astatine Lagom Bar. A information defender tells maine to get nan Cheeseboiga astatine Smish Smash. I’d emotion to, but I person meatballs to make.

As I locomotion upstairs, past Punsch Bar’s quiet stools, it appears that I mightiness beryllium taking this people by myself. However, erstwhile I’m done nan solid doors and into Cookery Skola, Kirsten Goldberg, nan caput of culinary instruction, appears. She is simply a section cook and nan erstwhile culinary head of nan defunct San Francisco Cooking School, wherever she taught mostly professional-level cooks. Now, she teaches nutrient lovers looking to person a bully time.

She offers maine an apron, a solid of pinkish cassis lemonade, and an apology for nan mini turnout. “No 1 knows we’re here,” she says a small wistfully. 

A fewer much students trickle in. Now we are seven. But only 1 tiny mates is present organically. The remainder of nan students are made up of Ingka corporate-types, who joined aft learning a photographer from The Standard would beryllium there, positive 2 of Goldberg’s friends, whom she invited for nan aforesaid reason. And me.

“I person to say,” Goldberg says sheepishly, “I’ve done 3 Swedish meatball classes truthful far. I thought they’d beryllium measurement much popular.” Surprisingly for nan location, “Getting Started pinch Burmese Food” and “Spanish Date Night” are her biggest sellers, on pinch “Cardamom Swirl,” an ode to Ikea’s other signature item. The second is simply a two-hour baking class, and you time off pinch a container of lukewarm buns, for $75. “Honestly, it’s a really good deal!” she says. 

Goldberg has prepped everything, pinch nan thief of Chazz Medeiros, a erstwhile cheer coach from Santa Rosa, who spent a decade doing backflips earlier becoming Goldberg’s assistant. The meatball ingredients are crushed pork and beef, butter, breadcrumbs, flour, milk, and eggs; a mashed murphy arsenic binder; and salt, achromatic pepper, allspice, and a spot of nutmeg.

All I person to do is bid a spicy margarita from 1 of Saluhall bars, chop an onion, saute, and mix.

The tiny 20-something mates are having a awesome time. “The past meatballs we made were from Trader Joe’s!” says nan guy, a package developer. He and his girlfriend, a physics teacher, ne'er shop astatine Ikea, but lately they’ve been connected a cooking-class bender. Their erstwhile stop: Story of Ramen, wherever they made noodles from scratch. Next up: 18 Reasons’ Korean Vegetarian Street Food.  

Goldberg’s Swedish meatballs aren’t nan aforesaid arsenic Ikea’s, per se. Rather, they’re an elevated rotation connected nan company’s 1985 classic. We hand-mold nan meat, pan-fry, and slow operation nan sauce, a simmering operation of cream, stock, soy sauce, and Dijon. 

These meatballs are lumpier than Ikea’s, which are almost disconcertingly uniform. I for illustration ours, homemade and imperfect. My cooking partner, who’s connected her 2nd cocktail from Punsch bar, plucks a shot from our cookware brimming pinch 2 twelve and pops 1 successful her mouth: “Oh, my fucking god, that’s good!”  An apt review. 

Meanwhile, Goldberg whips up a mates of elemental sides: mashed potatoes made pinch a ricer; a gorgeous greenish crockery flecked pinch watermelon radishes that is truthful overmuch prettier than cafeteria peas. Cocktails successful hand, we adjourn to nan long, blond-wood eating array — Ikea’s finest — for our feast. An evening that had started retired benignant of lonely turns retired to beryllium lovely.

The adjacent meatball people is April 13. It’s $95. You won’t prevention mid-Market by attending. But you will decidedly person a ball.