How to Eat Well for Cheap in an Expensive City

Big city food math looks brutal from the outside: thirty dollar pastas, twenty dollar cocktails, tasting menus that cost a car payment. But the people who live there aren't eating like that on a Tuesday. Every expensive food city runs a parallel economy of incredible cheap food, and finding it is mostly about knowing where the locals let their money rest.

Follow the immigrant neighborhoods

The best value food in any American city lives in its immigrant corridors: the taquerias, pho shops, dumpling houses, Ethiopian cafes, halal carts, and banh mi counters where a phenomenal meal costs a third of downtown prices. These kitchens compete on flavor for a community that knows the real thing, which is the strongest quality guarantee that exists. If a neighborhood's restaurant signs are in two or three languages, you're in the right place.

Lunch is the loophole

The same kitchen often serves nearly the same food at lunch for dramatically less. Lunch specials, bento boxes, taco plates, banh mi combos. If there's an ambitious restaurant you want to try, check whether it does lunch before you pay dinner prices for it. You'll trade candlelight for daylight and keep half your money.

Order like you've been there before

Cheap eating well is an ordering skill. Skip the drinks markup, since that's where restaurants make their margin. Order the specialty, the thing the place is named for or famous for, because the fourth item on the menu at a specialist beats the twentieth item anywhere. And in portions-are-huge America, two people splitting three things at a casual spot beats two entrees almost every time.

The counter is your friend

Sit down service costs money whether you notice it or not. The counter spots, food halls, market stalls, and order-at-the-window joints put the budget into the food instead of the floor staff. Some of the best bites in every major city come through a window.

Search the dish, dodge the rent

High visibility locations pay high rent, and that rent lives inside your check. When you search a specific dish instead of browsing whatever's nearby and prominent, you surface the little places two blocks over that spend on ingredients instead of frontage. A great bowl of pho does not need a view. Neither do you.