[nxcho]

As a Swede currently living in California who also has visited IKEA in several different countries I can report that the general experience of visiting IKEA is pretty much as stressful and disorienting here as in Sweden. There are some local variations in the product portfolio both due to different standards like in bed sizes and kitchen and cultural differences. You cannot find a cheese slicer in my nearest IKEA and they have icing on their cinnamon buns (almost blasphemy).

To be honest, IKEA is a Swedish company by brand only. The products are sourced from wherever it is cheapest to manufacture right now and the ownership structure is so complex, multinational and tax-avoidance schemy that probably only the head honcho Ingvar Kamprad (IK in IKEA) who until recently resided in Switzerland, knows where the profit ends up.

(edit: got Ingvar Kamprads name wrong first time around)

[trentmb]

> experience of visiting IKEA is pretty much as stressful and disorienting here as in Sweden

Weird- I visited an IKEA with four friends and it felt much like a theme park. There was a cafeteria and everything.

Granted, our 5th friend--whiskey--was there too.

[smnrchrds]

If you visited there with 4 friends, wouldn't you be the 5th friend?

[cortesoft]

It was four friends and then this guy. The other four hate him.

[golergka]

He was +1 of their 5th friend.

[trentmb]

Is friendship reflexive?

[JeremyMorgan]

Yes, he's Whiskey.

[tamana]

Whiskey is usually the fifth.

[_lbaq]

Ingvar Kamprad now moved home to Sweden, probably to spend his last year. All other still apply.

http://www.svd.se/ingvar-kamprad-flyttar-hem

[nxcho]

Thanks. I have edited my post :)

[tim333]

It seems most of the profit ends up in the charitable foundation which is now paying a bit out to the needy after some prodding http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/8772...

[tamana]

"Charitable" foundation. Aka IKEA R&D department and funds bunker.

[m_mueller]

Just some anecdote on Kamprad: Switzerland was also the first country for IKEA to expand into and we now have some of the largest stores. I suspect it had to do with Kamprad's early interest in the country, and possibly because it was a good test market for them. Most Swiss have heard some of stories about him - e.g. him driving an old Volvo, using and washing up plastic dishes and also that he often visited the first Ikea in Switzerland (Spreitenbach) in order to see how things go and optimise the strategy.

For me it has always been impressive how streamlined an Ikea is towards maximising revenue. I'm one of these people who tends to analyse my surroundings constantly for possible optimizations - yet in Ikea I couldn't come up with even one improvement that would make it better for the company. This alone is actually rather refreshing for me, finally a place where I can switch off my brain and just indulge in a bit of consumption!

[Dutchie]

The Swedes are using cheese slicers too? I always thought the Dutch were the only people in the world to use cheese slicers.

[nissehulth]

Yes, but it was invented by a Norwegian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Bj%C3%B8rklund

[speeder]

And here I was thinking this was a Brazillian invention (they are wildly popular in Brazil, everywhere you go in Brazil, even the middle of nowhere, like Amazon Rainforest, you will find someone that owns one).

[nxcho]

That is interesting. I thought that it was mostly and European thing. What kinds of cheese is common in Brazil?

[speeder]

the most popular cheese, far ahead of anything else, is mozarella... it is not high quality as actual italian ones though (it is way less "fibrous").

then we have Prato (it means "Plate" as in dinner plate... or dinner dish...), that has the exact same recipe as Danbo, but is made with brazillian milk, and seemly tastes very differently (I dunno, since I never ate Danbo).

then we have a purely local invention called Minas, named after the state of Minas Gerais, despite being a São Paulo invention... (go figure...), that one is hard to describe, since it refers to 4 different cheeses (or the same cheese with 4 slightly variations in the process to make them, but with end results drastically different).

Then other italian cheeses are popular here, maybe because the large italian community here, and how much Brazillians also love pizza, so here almost every supermarket offers Provolone, Parmesan and Gorgonzola.

In urban areas you can find frequently "Steppe" cheese, it is a russian cheese it seems, it is expensive (double the price of "Prato") but not much as local clones of french/swiss cheese (Steppe is half of the price of local clones of Emmental, Gruyere, etc...)

cheddar cheese is sold a bit, but most people consider it low quality crap, the biggest seller of cheddar cheese don't even bother in selling actual cheddar, and instead sell a clone that tastes mostly the same, for very little... people still prefer to buy more expensive mozarella instead.

[jessaustin]

Oh no, they don't use it on cheese...

[Dutchie]

Cool, didn't know that and I use his invention literally every day!

[tricolon]

Finn here. How else are you supposed to slice cheese?

[nxcho]

Knife i guess or buy factory sliced. Most cheeses in america is a bit to soft to slice with a cheese slicer anyway.

[Dutchie]

American cheese? Does that relate to real cheese as Pizza Hawaii compares to an actual Italian pizza?

[colechristensen]

There's cheese which is made in America which for most intents and purposes is cheese like everywhere else, and then there's "American cheese" which comes in slices or blocks and is "cheese product" and only vaguely resembles the real thing despite being delicious in certain guilty-pleasure situations.

[fennecfoxen]

Don't look for American cheese, look for Wisconsin or Vermont cheese. Maybe California in a pinch. Those will be good.

[tamana]

That makes no sense. The geographic source of the cheese is trivila compared to the way it is made. You can get cheap American process ccheese food or you can get expensive classic varieties of cheese from anywhere.

[nxcho]

In my experience, the more popular american cheeses are quite mild and have a low melting temperature to get a good melt and stretch on warm food. I don't find them particularly interesting to just slice and put on a piece of bread. It is often easy enough to find good but expensive imported cheeses.

[striking]

It's flimsy processed orange milk-based goop in thin sheets. Great on burgers and literally nothing else.

[kpil]

Actually, it ruins the burger...

[kuschku]

Well, for that there’s a special danish type of cheese slicer that works better with soft cheese.

[Moru]

We use this one for soft cheese:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=danish+cheese+slicer+wire&t=ffab&i...

[kuschku]

That’s exactly what I meant! We (my family being German) found it on one of our shopping trips at Bilka Kolding (we sometimes drive up there), and just bought one.

Sooo awesome.

[eru]

My foodie friends call that a `guitar'.

[BurningFrog]

Or Swedish cheese is made hard enough to be used with an osthyvel.

[bearbin]

Potato peeler? https://www.cookipedia.co.uk/wiki/images/thumb/5/5c/Peeler.j...

[m_mueller]

In Switzerland we do cheese shavings like described in the following article (although only for a specific type of cheese, the 'tete de moine' (monk's head). http://itotd.com/articles/217/the-girolle/

For any other hard cheese it's a bit blasphemic.

[klipt]

Cheese wire maybe?

[alistairSH]

Huh. I've had a cheese slicer at home forever (Scottish-American).

It mostly gets used at dinner parties, when we buy nicer cheeses; inexpensive cheese is almost all pre-sliced in the US. Same holds true for my parents.

[Symbiote]

Most cheese sold in Britain is not sliced, but most people use an ordinary knife for slicing it.

I'd guess grated cheese outsells sliced cheese.

[durandal1]

And for the record: The cheese slicers sold at IKEA are horrible, slicing way too thick slices.

[nxcho]

I have two slicers, a really good one and a bad one both from IKEA. Consistent quality is not really their thing.

[glormph]

Can you not bend them until the angle produces thinner slices?

[jon-wood]

I've always had one in England but most people who encounter it have no idea what it's for, so they're not exactly common place.

[groby_b]

Dude, the Germans love cheese slicers. (Granted, the cheese we slice is mostly Dutch. But still :)

[mercurial]

Danes do too.

[kalleboo]

> You cannot find a cheese slicer in my nearest IKEA

Hmm, they sell them at the one closest to me (in Japan) [Yes I'm a Swede)

[TrevorJ]

Is the aesthetic and design Swedish, or is that mostly a myth as well?

[nxcho]

Their main design office is in Sweden and most designers are Swedish. Sometimes they collaborate with 'star' designers and they have been accused of plagiarism quite a few times.

[hendler]

The food seems the most Swedish.