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Comment by bowsamic | Hacker News Reader

> meals ($15/day)

I can't quite wrap my head around this. Is there an expectation in the US that all meals must be eaten out or something?

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(Author) I make my meals when I work from home, but I didn't often have time to make meals and get to campus at time, so I'd buy a sandwich or salad at the deli instead. That's between $10-$15 depending on which cafe my class is nearest. Also being pregnant, my appetite and nausea are unpredictable, so I might buy another snack during the day.

Certainly with better planning, I could have reduced those costs slightly.

I would struggle to find a single meal eating out for that price at this point lol

Just to get an idea, how much would it cost to eat outside for lunch? With my European perspective, 15$ is what I would expect from a nice restaurant for lunch. Or a really fancy burger in an expensive city neighbourhood.

Yeah, a $12 entrée is pretty average for a single meal. Add anything else (tips, drink, etc.) or pick anything slightly more expensive and you'll easily hit $15. If you go for inexpensive options consistently (maybe you avoid tips and always get water at a cheaper place), you could probably average around $9-$10/meal, though you might get tired of it quickly. To average less than that while still eating out every meal, you'll have to get a bit more... creative with your selections.

> Yeah, a $12 entrée is pretty average for a single meal.

I would be still hungry after just a starter.

Entrée refers to the main meal in the US.

In France, it's difficult to have a nice meal for $15/15€, unless you are talking about ready made food/metros served in restaurants. And company restaurants are awful.

it depends, for the restaurants around my workplace, if you take just a main dish (which is usually well enough for a midday meal), it'd be slightly lower than 15 €. But once you add a starter/side dish or a drink or a coffee, you can easily go above that. There's also a few cheaper options where you can get combo options (like starter + main dish) for below 15 €.

For the company restaurants, from what I've seen, it depends on the company and how much they are paying, so it goes from pretty terrible to actually decent.

Do you mean Paris? I was in Paris and Bordeaux last week, Paris is for sure very expensive, sometime even close to what I’m used to pay in Switzerland. But in Bordeaux “plats/formules du jour” where below 12€ in restaurants, sometime below 10€.

Note that I meant for lunch, not dinner. I meant the equivalent of “Mittagsmenu” we have in Germany. The price is generally lower.

Edit: just to be sure my tone isn’t off here, I don’t expect to know what things cost in France and not trying to say that you’re incorrect. I’m just wondering if prices I’ve seen are more or less the norm or the exception.

In Berkeley, a cheap takeout meal like Chipotle is around ~$11. If you walked into a random nice restaurant for lunch and ordered one entree, + tax + tip, you'd surely be out $25.

In Berkeley, unless eating junk from a fast food, you're talking 20-25$/person/meal for a normal place. More like 40-50$ for a "nice" place. Even the fast food crap you'll be above 10$ unless you eat 4 chicken nuggets or something.

> unless eating junk from a fast food, you're talking 20-25$/person/meal for a normal place.

I don't think it's that high (yet?), though you can find restaurants like that. (See [1].)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31478539

To be honest I don't walk nearby campus often, so I'm not sure how the cheap food joints are around it. Perhaps its cheaper due to higher volume, or lower quality? But where we go to have lunch, it's a rare day when it costs me less than 20$ per person, once the bill is signed and we're out of the door. We try to aim for the value-for-quality segment.

I find it incredibly hard to meal prep and bring meals to work too. So, I also often eat lunch out. As others have said, Berkeley is really quite expensive. Even if I go the "smoothie" route for lunch, I'm still looking at $7 with tax and tip and I'm definitely not full... Most days I was on campus I walked 5 miles in total up and down hills, so I often wanted a filling lunch.

I think I don't mind spending the money, but it is a significant change compared to working from home, or working in an office with food, or just making so much more money that you don't care. (Which is how it was when I was a SWE that worked in an office without free food.)

That's 5$/meal which is very low for Berkeley, even for groceries (unless you eat ramen).

A university setting often has a cafeteria or other method of feeding the students, and one of the employment benefits is getting to eat there "for free" - but then for tax reasons they list it out separately on the income statement.

Not sure how common it is in the US, but at Berkeley the cafeterias are not free. They are a bit cheaper, around $9 for lunch if you prepay, but $13 if you don't! To be honest, I don't even think faculty are told how to take advantage of this... they're off campus too and in the last couple of years, the hours have not been great. Food is totally fine for what it is, though!

I distinctly remember being charged the equivalent of $25 US for one plate of noodles, this was in Basel in 2005. Groceries were also very expensive.

Well, Switzerland is expensive in general, you will reply. True. Berkeley is expensive as well.

Saves time

To be fair the service is so poor here in Germany that it's far quicker to buy fresh produce and cook your own food than to eat out. You have to budget around 2 or 3 hours for a meal here...I guess in the US it is fast to eat out, even at a restaurant. Here in Germany the waiters just ignore you, but everyone is used to it so it won't change

I'm not sure how you're interpreting 'meal' from this post but they aren't necessarily talking about sit down restaurants.

My experience is quite different. When I'm in the US for conferences I'm always amazed that when going out for dinner lots of places make you wait (sometimes up to 30min) even though the restaurant is half empty. It has happened to me especially when out relatively early. Mind you this is for dinner, lunch is somewhat different usually.

>Here in Germany the waiters just ignore you, but everyone is used to it so it won't change

Funny, just by coincidence I was reading notes I kept when I visited Germany from the U.S. by myself several decades ago. I commented back then, more than once, about how annoyingly long I had to wait to simply get the tab at the end of the meal so I could pay. I thought it was just me.

No, it's a well known problem, among both Germans and foreigners. Everyone hates it, but they just sigh and say it won't change. It makes me genuinely angry how hard it is to get out of a restaurant.

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