How much do you spend on dinners out?

milos_mommy

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#21
Pizza is still relatively cheap though, you pay $15-20 for a large (the size of 3 individual ones), and pasta isn't bad either, often around $10-12 for an entree... Burgers and sandwiches often $9 and they come with fries and sometimes a salad too. It's steak, chicken, fish with sides that are more expensive.
Not here! I'm not sure about really cheap chains, and fast food places are different, but at any diner or casual family restaurant burgers are usually around $12-13. Most places do offer one sandwich which is either grilled cheese or a chicken breast on a bun for $9.99. Sometimes they include fries, but I've never been to a restaurant that includes soup or salad with a burger. And most places have the burger at one price then you can upgrade for a few dollars to add tomato, lettuce, cheese, a pickle and fries.


the only place I know that has pizza for $15 is Costco. It's typically around $22 for a regular cheese pie.

Prices here also increased pretty drastically over the past few years, I don't know if that's the whole country or just us. Restaurants are always posting signs "due to bird flu please excuse our price increase of $3 per chicken dish" or some crap.
 

JessLough

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#23
At chains, probably $35-$50 for the two of us. Lower end of that if we're not doing apps, higher end for apps. We go to a certain rotisserie chain once a month, and it's about $40 for entrees, cokes, and a shared dessert.

I don't think we've really gone anywhere above $80, which would have included appetizers, entrees, cokes and then one alcoholic beverage, plus taxes and tip.
 

milos_mommy

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#24
You're in North NJ right? It seems to be a bit cheaper down here.
Nope, eastern Long Island, most expensive county as far as COL in the whole country. It's cheaper everywhere, except maybe the more expensive neighborhoods in Manhattan and DC.
 

*blackrose

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#25
the only place I know that has pizza for $15 is Costco. It's typically around $22 for a regular cheese pie.
Holy crap. We just got two medium any topping pizzas for $6 each. o_O A large two topping would have been $10. (Pizza hut.) If we picked up a pizza from Sam's it'd have been probably even cheaper.
 

milos_mommy

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#26
I think Pizza Hut here costs around $18 for a plain (cheese) large. At Pizza Hut and dominos you can get lots of deals like 3 medium pizzas for $7 each, but nobody wants to eat at dominos in NY when you can get real pizza :(

We ordered dominos for three adults and a toddler a couple of weeks ago and it was like $55 with coupons/deals. Two pizzas, one with a topping, a side of chicken wings, and bottle of soda. That's a lot cheaper than you could get that at an actual pizza place.

ETA: I just looked and I'm actually mistaken...plain cheese are like $16-$18, but it's $3-$4 to get a single topping (which we usually do).
 
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Locke

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#27
Holy crap. We just got two medium any topping pizzas for $6 each. o_O A large two topping would have been $10. (Pizza hut.) If we picked up a pizza from Sam's it'd have been probably even cheaper.


Wow! $6 only gets you a slice of pizza around here!

My SO and I spend anywhere from $20-60 depending on where we go. My favourite is going for burritos, which is about $20 for both of us, and going out for Indian in our neighbourhood is about $30. This awesome pizza place we go to is usually around $60, but you could get pizza elsewhere for half that, but not nearly as good.
 

kady05

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#29
Holy cow I never knew pizza could be so expensive! We get 1 medium 2 topping + wings from Domino's for less than $20 delivered LOL. If we want to go to a nicer pizza place, it's around $12-15 for a large, and that feeds us for days.
 

Michiyo-Fir

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#30
Usually it's between 30-35 for the 2 of us to eat a meal out. Of course, if we ordered something more expensive off the menu that day it could be 35-40. But we usually don't order drinks and we only order 2 entrees which are between 10-15 each. We just drink water or tea if the restaurant gives tea, and that's free. Most restaurants here don't offer specials so these are the regular prices.

If he gets a beer, we might order less food like an entree and an appetizer to share. I very rarely order drinks, I go to the bar for that instead of having a drink with dinner (unless it's pop but even so, I order pop maybe once out of 15 dinners out).

Of course, these figures are for very casual restaurants around town, not anything fancy at all or upscale. For fancy/upscale places we could easily spend 60-300 for dinner for 2. But since we eat out a lot (3-4 times a week), most of the time we try to stay within the 30-40 range.

Edit: A lot of the places we go are Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Greek, Indian so often it's not really 1 entree per person. For example vietnamese food we could get 1 big bowl of pho, chicken satay (4 skewers), salad rolls (6 pieces) and maybe spring rolls if we're really hungry and then we would share everything. That's around 9 + 7 + 6 + 6 = 29 not including tax and tip which puts us at around 35.

Same thing for Japanese food 4 rolls plus shrimp tempura or gyoza 4.50x4 + 7 = 25 not including tax and tip.

Thai food: 1 curry, 1 pad thai, 1 bowl of rice to share 15 + 13 + 2.50 = 29.50.

I would say though, we eat really good quality meals for 30-35, and it's not really diner food like a burger and fries (although that costs about 30 around here too). Often at for 30-35 we can have fish, and prawns as well as meat dishes too so we're quite happy to pay that much for the quality of food we get.

A steakhouse would be really expensive here, we usually spend about 150 at a nice steakhouses for 2 people. 40-60 for a steak + 12/side and we usually get 2 steaks and 2 sides. Even at chain restaurants where they don't specialize in steak, steak including side is about 35-40 so we would still spend 90-100.
 
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DJEtzel

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#33
I usually spend about $25/meal when I go out with friends, as a single person, one drink, one entree, plus tip/tax. I could take that down to $15 (total) without an alcoholic beverage and a cheaper entree.

Don't get me started on what I spend on sushi...
 

milos_mommy

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#35
You can actually get sushi here very cheaply, depending on what you order. If its lunchtime or a quick takeout place it's no more expensive than say, Mexican takeout or a Chinese food dinner. There's much fancier sushi restaurants where you can sit and order multiple courses of sushi featuring lobster and crazy presentations or whatever....but you can also get a sashimi plate big enough to share for $9 at a hibachi joint (which runs like $60-$75 for two).

It's basically all the same quality, too. I wonder if that has to do with proximity to the ocean?

ETA: we spend like $80 for two at the nicer sushi places...that's usually each ordering an app, one non-sushi entree (more expensive), one or two fancy-ish sushi rolls, and one or two alcoholic drinks. So pretty much cheaper than we can go anywhere equally as classy that serves not-sushi.
 

Michiyo-Fir

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#36
We also have a lot of sushi for not a lot of money. There's literally a hundred plus sushi restaurants within a 30 minute drive from me. Most of them are around 30-50 for 2 people. Out of those 100, there are 20ish that are very good quality and cheap, but also another 5-10 on top of that which are the best quality, fish shipped directly from Japan, or extremely high end 150-400 for 2 ppl (set menu), or "authentic" with the same level of service, presentation and variation of sushi by the piece/sashimi as Japan.

Most places for rolls and American style sushi (California, spicy tuna, rolls like volcano, dynamite and their own creations which don't exist much in Japan) are not very expensive other than the few high end sushi restaurants. Seafood is very readily available in Vancouver.

Edit: wow I'm so off with the number of sushi places. According to the Internet, there's 600 plus sushi restaurants within 30 minutes of me in just one direction... Not even counting the other directions which lead to other subdivisions of greater Vancouver. And apparently there are more than 5000 restaurants in greater Vancouver....so food is definitely not hard to come and prices are good here.
 

MrsBoats

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#37
I have to laugh....for me and Mr. Boats, it seems like we can't get out of any restaurant for under 100 bucks. He's a big guy (6' 4" and somewhere around 260 lbs) and he eats a lot. I can't have just one glass of wine...so $100 seems to be the magic number for us

There is one place that we always seem to hit around 50 bucks...the clam shack down the street. Lobster rolls, clam cakes and fried calamari are the usual suspects for us there. LOL
 

Fran27

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#38
Oh wow I usually find it expensive when I pay $25 for sushi :rofl1: But it's just a sashimi or chirashi meal usually.
 
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#39
We also have a lot of sushi for not a lot of money. There's literally a hundred plus sushi restaurants within a 30 minute drive from me. Most of them are around 30-50 for 2 people. Out of those 100, there are 20ish that are very good quality and cheap, but also another 5-10 on top of that which are the best quality, fish shipped directly from Japan, or extremely high end 150-400 for 2 ppl (set menu), or "authentic" with the same level of service, presentation and variation of sushi by the piece/sashimi as Japan.

Most places for rolls and American style sushi (California, spicy tuna, rolls like volcano, dynamite and their own creations which don't exist much in Japan) are not very expensive other than the few high end sushi restaurants. Seafood is very readily available in Vancouver.

Edit: wow I'm so off with the number of sushi places. According to the Internet, there's 600 plus sushi restaurants within 30 minutes of me in just one direction... Not even counting the other directions which lead to other subdivisions of greater Vancouver. And apparently there are more than 5000 restaurants in greater Vancouver....so food is definitely not hard to come and prices are good here.
I'm moving in with you.




We went out to a sports bar last night and both got food & a drink. With a tip, it came out to around $40. it isn't a fancy, or high end restaurant, just a normal sports bar with several TVs, a bar, and some tables.
 

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