Meal prices?

Your best option is to go on TripAdvisor or yelp and look at menus for restaurants in the places you will be staying. Prices can differ greatly, just as they do at home, based on the type of restaurant you choose. You can find everything from a very inexpensive walk up crepe or kebab stand to the ultra expensive options.

Breakfast, lunch or dinner? Sandwiches and crepes from a stand or 3 course meals with wine pairings? The sky's the limit. Or you could eat very cheaply. We've found that our meal costs are similar in Euros to what we would pay in dollars in most US cities. Breakfast at the hotel, a light lunch at a Cafe or maybe a picnic lunch from a market, then a 3 course dinner with house wine at a bistro or casual restaurant averages out for us to about €80-100/day. YMMV.

I don’t eat out much here at home but in France last April it was usually 25-30€ for a cafe meal with wine. My main would usually be between 15 & 20€ with a glass of wine around 6€. I do pick up sandwiches from a boulangerie for lunches sometimes which with a bottle of water was under 10€. I am expecting prices to have increased this spring.

I did manage to spend 42€ for lunch one day, lol…meal-sized salad, bottled water, accidentally drank 2 glasses of rosé in the warm sun on the terrasse then had dessert and espresso. I wound up skipping dinner so it evened out, haha!!

French restaurants often have good deals for weekday lunches, it you can afford to take a sightseeing break at that time of day.

I usually find that meals in Europe cost same or less than the same thing in US or Canada . Usually In US you must add 15-25% tip which is not required in France and all taxes are included in the price. Wine also tends to be cheaper in Europe.

The problem with questions such as this is that not everyone has the same meal objectives. However, this is how I evaluate it per person, without wine:

• Breakfast - café/croissant, 3€

• Lunch - on the run, 10€; in a café, 15€ to 20€

• Dinner (basic) - 2 to 3 courses for something I could probably do myself, 30€ to 35€

• Dinner (enhanced) - 2 to 3 courses for a restaurant with a chef using fresh ingredients, 40€ to 50€+

• Dinner (tasting menus) - 75€ to 120€

This is like saying, how much is a hotel. Too broad.
Paris pricing is like a major US city.

@Tocard gives a very good example.

My husband and I generally spent E125/day in Italy this past fall. Now, we LOVE to eat and even though we didn’t splurge much, it still averaged that much. Also, we almost always did sit down meals both lunch and dinner. This also included our late afternoon aperitivos. Sometimes we would have a bottle of wine at dinner, but just as often the house wine.
So, we spend more on food than many people do.

(As an aside, how do you get the Euro symbol Tocard?)`

If you use a Mac, to get the € symbol, press Option, Shift, and 2 at the same time. On a PC, I think it’s Ctrl, Alt, and E. On an iPad, it’s available in the second panel of symbols.

Thank you JHK! I use an iPad, so will give it a try.

I should have mentioned, I'm vegan so my main courses are usually the least expensive on the menu/carte.

On an iPad or iPhone, you can also hold down the "$" button and it will pop-up with other many currency symbol options—"€" included. In fact, holding down many buttons will give you other options, including characters like "è" and "ô" which are convenient in France.

My advice for cheaper meals is to keep walking. The deeper you get into a neighborhood, the more likely you'll find somewhere that's affordable while still tasty. We have next-to-no French but still managed to find and order delicious meals from local places. Near Notre Dame, we walked passed the trendy restaurants and cute bars and ended up at a little place that served buckwheat crepes with basically ham and cheese. They were excellent and a cheap eat. The place had a student-vibe and had the friendliest servers we had in Paris. One day, we had lunch in a department store cafe on the Champs-Élysée. It was surprisingly good and reasonable. We felt very chic. Our last night, we saw a group massing near a restaurant while we were looking at the menu. It was a fixed price for several courses, wine and a dessert. Sometimes, after a long day of sightseeing, needing to make less choices feels like a comfortable decision. Right after we were seated and ordered, in came the big group. They were a tour that had come there for dinner. They ate the same courses we did. Again, great food and because the food had been prepared in large quantities, it was very affordable but didn't feel touristy. That was supposed to be our splurge night but was well below what we budgeted. However, our beer at the top of the Eiffel Tower was not cheap but was quite memorable.

The last two years breakfast costs us about 5€ each - a cup of coffee and either half a buttered baguette (tartine) or a croissant. We pay between 15€ and 20€ each for three course lunch, sometimes that includes wine, sometimes it doesn't. Dinner we pay less, because after the lunch we have we just don't feel like a big meal. We only done where the meals are all made in house.

Those prices have remained fairly steady, even with the cost of living increase. This year we're not expecting things to be too much more expensive.

And before people ask, we're talking about ± 300 meals a year.

I have been to Paris 5 times (and will be back there in a couple of weeks) and I have found that eating can be a little or it can be a lot. If you are choosing river dinner cruises or Michelin star restaurants you can expect to pay a pretty penny. If you are being more practical and do a little research, you can eat for about the same costs as you find in the USA. One of my favorite lunch places in Paris is Pomme de Pain, which can be described as sort of a French version of Subway sandwhich shops. I'd suggest 75-100 Euro per day, per person for meals. But it always helps to have a little extra to spend on dessert or that after dinner cocktail. Good luck and happy travels.

Convenience stores and supermarkets also have good takeaway