What’s cooking at IKEA IKONIC?

Swedish meatballs, kitchen must-haves, food anecdotes and more!

14 Oct 2025

As an individual who’s been trying (and failing) to learn the art of delayed gratification, the only time I’ve successfully championed it is in the kitchen. Or to be more specific, when I’m baking.

When I wear my mittens, the rest of the world falls away. Hours would go by in a blink, as I kept mixing, tasting and adding final flourishes to whatever I was baking in the kitchen. My mother would often joke how the best way to get me off “that phone” was to make me bake something for the family. And my screen time on those days proved her right.

But this is far from an original experience. For Indian households, countless such stories surround the kitchen. Function may reign supreme, but emotion comes a close second. This is where we’ve grown up, testing if the dal lacks salt, sneakily cooking instant noodles with our siblings past nightfall, or attempting to master that one recipe by naani we’ve all grown up eating. Kitchens today don’t look the same as they did decades ago. But our relationship with them still remains dear. And IKEA, the Swedish conglomerate and home goods extraordinaire, certainly agrees. As Ankit Ghai, IKEA India’s Selling Manager, affirms, “Cooking and eating, especially for Indians, has been an innate part of our culture for very, very long. It is also one of the fastest-growing areas for us as a business.”

At the IKEA IKONIC showcase held annually in Mumbai, India, they’ve christened 2025 as “The Year of Cooking and Eating”. The event, held at Snowball Studios, contained interactive setups and installations pertaining to each step of the cooking process: right from chopping, stirring and prepping, to serving and cleaning.

The event jointly celebrated the 40th year anniversary of the Swedish meatballs (curiously, “IKEA’s most sold product worldwide”, as Kevin Johnson, Country Food Manager at IKEA India, affirms). Besides the meatballs, attendees gorged on the Almondy cake, a milk-chocolate wrapped Swedish favourite which makes its debut in India this year. Our verdict? En utterly utsökt (delicious) lineup!

The Great Indian Kitchen

Are the needs of an Indian kitchen different today compared to what they were years ago? Jasmeet Sood, the Country Home Furnishing and Retail Design Manager at IKEA India, sums up what she learnt after undertaking multiple home visits prior to launching new kitchen products this year. Her observations signalled a new shift in Indian households, with most of them opting for open kitchen layouts now. As she explains, “Gone are the days when the kitchen used to be a separate room. Now it’s more inclusive; everything is open in the home. They want the person who’s cooking not to be excluded from the conversations and the rest of the activities which are going on in the home.” With most homes today gravitating towards open kitchen layouts, there were two issues left to tackle: organisation and storage.

With an open kitchen, everything is visible: right from the multitude of plastic dabbas that crowd every Indian household, to modular drawers jam-packed with masalas and utensils. IKEA’s storage solutions attempt to tackle this very problem, available in a variety of materials and dimensions to cater to every need and want. Jasmeet affirms, drawing a parallel to her own everyday routine. “For people like me who are also working, I want my cooking time to be more efficient. So when you go inside, you find the place where you’re ingredients are: in the right drawer in the right cabinet. I pull it out, and my spice is there. Everything is organised.”

But IKEA’s approach towards designing products for kitchens goes beyond catering to mere wants and needs. It aims to educate, too. A compelling example of the same is the Working Triangle, a term coined to describe the ideal placement of where everything should be placed in a kitchen: right from the washing area, to the cooking space and storage. It goes even further, exploring nuanced details such as the ideal distance between each of these components and the ideal gap to maintain between your cabinets and your countertops.

IKEA IKONIC proves that much like a well-cooked dish, a multifunctional kitchen, too, requires the right mix of ingredients to truly make it shine. The payoff? A smoother, more efficient kitchen, where spills and discomfort are minimised — leaving room for even more happy memories.