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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

Currently living in Melbourne and it’s so hard to bother cooking at home because I can go on a 5 minute walk and find somewhere that will serve an absolutely delicious meal that looks like it could be put on display in an art gallery and it costs only a little more than cooking yourself.

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> costs only a little more than cooking yourself.

that absolutely cannot be true. Eating out in melb is on average 2x more expensive than cooking yourself, unless you are not a bulk buyer, and is buying _tiny_ quantities (which are expensive), and is cooking _to_ a recipe, rather than buying what's in season and adjusting the recipe for it.

I’m single so it’s hard to cook for 1 without re eating the same thing 5 times in a row or having wasted food. Eating out _is_ more expensive but it’s only a bit more expensive and it’s massively more convenient and tastes much better.

I can go out and get a lamb wrap or a Bahn mi for $13 and a 4 minute walk and it’s extremely tasty. I really couldn’t beat that cooking for myself.

If I was cooking for a whole family then the numbers change since it’s about the same effort to cook no matter what quantity.

> I’m single so it’s hard to cook for 1 without re eating the same thing 5 times in a row or having wasted food.

That is what a freezer is for? Cook once, eat 4-5 times when you want it, not dictated by leftovers going off in the fridge [1]. That's what I did when I was single and it is what I still do since having ready-made food in the freezer to take along as lunch, for when my daughter comes home hungry from school, (etc.) is quite handy.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH3UncRagXY

That's fine, but their point still stands. They find it economically similar and much higher on difficulty to cook at home. If they adapted a different system, this may change somewhat - although it's unlikely to have the same yield for a single in an apartment.

Not only that, the folks working there are usually happy! It's nuts how often I go somewhere in the USA and everyone is just miserable.

You are bad at managing money if you think eating out is just a bit more expansive than cooking

The weird thing is in Melbourne, you can get top quality food for less or around equal to buying groceries. It's an actual "economy of scale", same with Tokyo. It's hard to comprehend for folks in places like the USA, where it's definitely way more expensive to eat out (and typically worse for you).

I lived in Tokyo

When I lived there you would be able to get a gyudon for roughly 300-400 yens

It will get you full but it’s not very nutritive

You can eat many eastern / western fast food dishes for around that price, but if you want to go to an actual sit down restaurant it’s much more expensive

I didn’t cook in Tokyo because I was on a scholarship so I didn’t care, but friends told me it would be cheaper to cook too

I can go out and buy a Bahn Mi for $10AUD which includes fresh bread baked that morning, fresh vegetables and grilled chicken. It's basically impossible to match this without doing it all from scratch and baking your own bread/grilling your own chicken. At which point you have to produce like 20 in a single go to match the value of the one I can buy pre made.

Then Australia is incredible expensive

I can get the same dish in Canada for 8 AUD and can cook for less than half the money, and Canada is not a cheap country

We also have minimum wages, social safety nets, and broadly a high standard of living on most metrics compared to North America.

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