- I went to the Ikea store in Brooklyn, New York, to eat everything on the restaurant’s menu.
- I ate vegetable soup, blackberry and blue cheese salad, gravlax, coleslaw, chicken tenders, Swedish meatballs, salmon balls, veggie balls, a salmon dinner, marzipan cake, and chocolate conspiracy cake.
- Some dishes blew me away, but I’d never order the chicken tenders again.
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There’s always a bad egg.
In the case of Ikea’s food, the bad egg is chicken. Chicken tenders, to be exact.
I ate every item at Ikea’s restaurant, including chicken tenders, soup, salad, coleslaw, gravlax, a salmon dinner, veggie balls, salmon balls, meatballs, marzipan cake, and chocolate conspiracy cake.
There was a wide range of quality, with gravlax and the meatballs at the very top. I wasn’t a huge fan of the soup or the veggie balls, which were both largely unsatisfying.
However, nothing appalled me quite like the chicken tenders.
I usually do like chicken tenders. In college, my best friend and I would frequently visit a grilled cheese restaurant in our college town just for their chicken tenders. I often crave those now.
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What makes a good chicken tender is an even outer crisp (fried at a high temperature) and juicy chicken on the inside that's neither over- nor undercooked. I've had overcooked chicken tenders in my day, but nothing quite like Ikea's desiccated strips.
Perhaps what made these worse was my anticipation: I was looking forward to a reasonably crispy and juicy chicken tender, but my first bite revealed nothing but disappointment.
The battered coating itself was crispy enough, but the chicken underneath felt like it had been left out under a heat lamp for days. It was too hard to even bite - I had to rip and gnaw at the "tender" like a dog at a bone.
The chicken tasted of nothing but salt and breadcrumbs, and I had to wash out my mouth with some of the accompanying fries. Those were crispy on the outside and soft inside like the chicken should have been.
I tried both tenders to make sure the bad tender wasn't just a fluke. It wasn't.
Now is the winter of my discontent with Ikea's chicken tenders. It's even more surprising to me that Ikea's chicken tenders are so terrible when its restaurant does a better job on many of its more complex dishes.
Chicken tenders are a staple of every kid's (and joyful adult's) menu. Ikea's restaurant does so much else right - its chicken tenders deserve the same treatment.
