IKEA Edmonton

A place where you can shop and enjoy. The hot dogs are very cheap and delicious. There is a playground area for kids and you can shop without worrying.

Believe it or not, if you are a cheapskate you can actually have a cheap family day out at Ikea. Start the day off at their restaurant for an el cheapo 99p fry up breakfast with hash brown, bacon, eggs and baked beans. If you have an ikea store credit card you even get a free coffee/tea. Then send the kids off to the play area while you explore the 2 levels of furniture madness. Grab lunch back at the restaurant before heading downstairs. Marvel at the long queues at the checkout and discover how much junk you’ve just bought that you probably don’t need. And there’s even cheap hot dog chips and ice cream on your way out. Lovely!

This is a pretty good IKEA to my mind. Easily accessible location from the North Circular, loads of parking, all the usual IKEA features, restaurant, giant playpen full of coloured balls where you can ditch the kids etc etc.

The restaurant and coffee shop have great views over North East London, as good as they can be anyway. You can marvel at the smoke being thrown out by the Edmonton incinerator, which is just a few hundred metres to the North.

Watch which way the wind is blowing so that you can see whether your home might be in line for some of the 80 or 90 odd kilos of arsenic, cadmium and mercury that the incinerator emits each year, or additional quantities of toxic dioxins.

Thank your lucky stars if you are from somewhere west, north or south, east is not so good as this is the prevailing wind direction. Ironic to think, as you chomp through your meatballs, chips and gravy in this most iconic temple of consumerism, that there’s probably plenty of unloved discarded IKEA furniture burning in the incinerator.

Riots accompanied the opening of this branch of IKEA. I think some of the less sophisticated customers at Edmonton have got a taste for blood from the riot and believe that such behaviour is normal and therefore acceptable. One afternoon, long after the opening riot day riot, I had the displeasure to see a yob facing off multiple security guards at the till area, challenging them to come outside, effing and jeffing.

IKEA gets to everybody a bit when it’s busy, but relax, have a cheap hotdog and over carbonated soft drink…