Ikea Announces Test-Kitchen Dishes Like Mealworm Meatballs

"I found that Ikea swears it's not "just" healthy and sustainable, but "delicious too." Their iconic meatballs went vegetarian in 2014, vegan in 2015, and are now reimagined as a "Neatball" available in a mealworm version or a vegetable version made from beets, carrots, and parsnips—both still served with mashed potatoes, gravy, and lingonberry sauce. The company discovered that almost a third of shoppers were coming to stores mainly to eat in the cafeteria, and the updated offerings include a Dogless Hotdog (a glazed dried carrot served stem and all, topped with beet-berry ketchup, a mustard-and-turmeric cream, roasted onions, cucumbers, and an herb-salad mix on a spirulina-green bun), a Bug Burger whose patty is four-fifths root vegetable and one-fifth darkling-beetle larva topped with relish, beet-berry ketchup, chive spread, and greens, a hydroponic salad grown in a glass box in Ikea’s basement dressed with basil–tarragon–lemon-balm and finished with croutons made from leftover bread, and a microgreen ice cream made by mixing underground-garden herbs into an agar–carob-starch base with sugar, lemon juice, and apple." - Clint Rainey