HELP Average meal planning Paris & London

Take you US budget and add 20%. For two us we plan on at least 100/125 euro/per day and sometimes a bit more because we tend to do some sharing and often skip lunch. Also you need to think in terms of local currency. If you spend a $170 in the US, you could easily spend 175 to 200 euro per day in Europe. Remember London is one of the most expensive cities in the world and Paris is not far behind.

Is that US$100 per day for four people? If so that is not going to work? US$100 per person per day would be plenty in Paris. I have been to London but not nearly as many times as I have been to Paris so I feel less comfortable opining on costs in London. Right now, US$100 is about 84€ In Paris, you should be able to get breakfast for 10€ to 15€ per person (we don't have the hotel breakfast if all of us are eating but we might send the children to get that while my husband and I go and have coffee and I will have a croissant). That leaves 69€ for lunch and dinner which I think is a lot of money. For my family of four which includes a young adult and an 11-year old, we rarely go over that 85€ per person per day and we don't really watch the budget on a daily basis. We do more of a total amount for the entire trip and it usually works because for example, my husband has only a cup of coffee for breakfast most days and every once in a while, he will have an omelet but that is only if we are in a place that offers them so usually his breakfast bill is less than 5€. I usually have a roll or croissant and coffee so I am under 10€ most days. I feel like we eat a lot but if we have a big, expensive lunch, we usually eat a very light dinner and vice versa. Lots of days we have a slice of pizza (Nicks on Rue Faubourg Montmartre is our favorite for slices in Paris) or a sandwich. For dinner, my daughter, son and I tend to order the prix fixe and my husband is more likely to go a la carte. Sometimes we splurge on wine and sometimes we drink the house wine but at the end of the trip, we usually end up having spent about 25% less than the amount budgeted for food, which for us is US$100 per person per day for Paris.

London

You can pay £15 pp for a hotel breakfast or if you go to a coffee shop, a cappuccino will cost £2.50 and a pastry £1.50/2.00.

Lunch - if you are busy sightseeing, you probably won't have time for a sit down lunch. A sandwich, drink and crisps will cost £3-6 pp from a supermarket. Decent burgers in a sit down restaurant will cost c£10/12 pp and drinks a further £3-5 pp.

Pub grub for lunch or dinner will cost £8-15 pp plus £3-6 pp for drinks. You can spend much more, of course.

I've had limited opportunities to try the special mid-day deals (often limited to weekdays) in England but was very pleased with them in France this summer. I'm not sure what the current pricing will be like in Paris, but I am confident that the equivalent of $100 per day per person will be generous, especially if you often have time to take advantage of the lunch specials. Paying for breakfast in your hotel will be as expensive a proposition as it is in the US.

Caveat: I normally drink water, never coffee or anything alcoholic.

Right now I have $300 per day budgeted. I hope that works.

The one thing that you might want to point out to your teens is about soft drinks. In Europe it is Not common to get free refills. My boys missed that when they were young and traveling with us.
Later, when they went with school groups and were paying their own bills, they remembered and warned their friends.

Hope you all have a great trip and I'm looking forward to reading a trip report!

Mimi

Make it work. pop into grocery stores and get some premade meal takeaways.. they often have great salads etc.

In paris do not let kids order sodas with every meal.. servings are small( 6-8 oz is not unusual ) and they do not offer refills and the costs are high( 5 euros to sit down with a soda)..once again.. pop into a grocers and grab one out of the cold case for 2 euros.. or a six pack for less that 5 euros and put in hotel mini bar fridge. Tap water is good and drinkable and free .. any cafe restaurant will supply that for you.. do not need the 5 euro bottled water either.. ( but you must of course order some food or coffees you cant just stop for water and pay nothign for table )

For lunches we often eat street food.. a good ham and cheese crepe and a soda can cost less that 5-8 euros and is filling..

Breakfast in America is a restaurant in Paris that DOES serve refillable coffee.. the only place that you will likely see it.

You should be fine on your budget. We were there this past summer and our kids eat adult portions as well and I would say we were between 200 and 250 a day most days.
We did take out for breakfast at places like Pret a Manger and that was about $30 for the 4 of us. We usually spent $40-50 on lunch and the rest on dinner and sometimes some snacks like ice cream and such.
The only way I can see $100 working is if you buy most things from a grocery store and cook.

$300 per day for the family sounds like a workable budget. Rick's Paris book (intro, p. 5) suggests an average meal cost per adult of $15 for breakfast, $20 for lunch, and $50 for dinner, with drinks. This doesn't include any major splurges, but also doesn't "limit" you to picnics (though I do recommend some picnics). The book covers various dining strategies, or see also https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/sleeping-eating. Rick's London book predicts that you can easily spend less, but I think that those numbers don't include drinks and assume more chain restaurants, which are all over London.

Breakfast in Paris is absurdly overpriced. Buy some juice boxes at a grocery store to begin the day, nibble on a pain au chocolat and expresso (or Americano, at extra price) and make do until lunch. Many restaurants offer fixed-price menus for lunch, with fewer choices but at lower prices. Make that the central meal of the day; in the evening get by with a big salade or other one-course meal. $100 a day would not do me, alone, in a big North American city, never mind Paris where full meals are worth the extra cost, and wine a necessity.

Traveling families have a significant advantage over singles in countries where travelers are often stuck paying for bottled water: The litre bottles usually cost much less per ounce than the 1/3- and 1/2-litre bottles. Just agree on whether you want fizzy or still water. Among the locals, the default is fizzy, so it's important to communicate clearly with the server if you want still water.

I found the sandwiches available for carry-out to be quite large. I think many people would be happy with 1/2 of one of those sandwiches plus some fruit.

You may be surprised that you don't go out and sit down for each meal. That just takes so much time! We budget 100-125 euro for each day for two people. I really try to book hotels that have breakfast included, that hold us over till about 2 then we grab a slice or a sandwich and eat dinner late, like at 8.

I'm a big fan of the museum/botanical garden/historic site/national park cafes in the UK. Lots of them have a good mix of freshly prepared locally sourced options along with the obligatory plastic-wrapped paninis, you sometimes get a really cool setting like the cafe area at the Victoria & Albert or the Orangerie at Kew Gardens and you can often get a tasty lunch in the £7-12 per meal range. Plus, eating inside the property means no repeat of entry lines or bag checks if your time there seems to want to be on both sides of lunch (and given how many cool places don't open until 10:00am, IIRC, the odds are good you'll want to do that)

Your budget of $300 is definitely in the ball park. I do not know where all the folks here eat and say portions are so much smaller than the US but that has not been our experience. We have split many meals and wished we had split a couple of others. For example we split an omelette for breakfast it also included a croissant, toast, and this lovely crusty bread, juice & coffee. We averaged $100/day in Paris perhaps a bit more but we had wine with every stop.

Enjoy your trip!

Now, I'm not suggesting you eat only at chain restaurants BUT if you're travelling with teens then you may find the likes of Pret A Manger, Pizza Expres & Wagamama both convenient and popular. They are everywhere and serve decent quality food, speedily, in a family-friendly atmosphere. Pret is a cafe/sandwich shop while Pizza Express, Wagamama and the like do sitdown meals.

They all have online menus with prices and nutritional information so you could take a look and work out prices (you'll find they're in line with prices at other non-chain places) to get an idea of what you might spend. And don't forget Nando's, one of the few places in Britain to offer free top-ups for soda. Portions in the UK are somewhat smaller than in the US, generally.

https://www.pizzaexpress.com/our-food/restaurant-menu/restaurant-menu

https://www.wagamama.com/our-menu

https://www.nandos.co.uk/food/menu

I do not know where all the folks here eat and say portions are so much smaller than the US but that has not been our experience.

Having spent every summer holiday in various parts of the US for quite a few years I can say that portion sizes in the US are significantly bigger than most places in the UK and Europe. Yes there are a few places in the UK that serve huge portions but these are usually low end places that serve cheap food and lots of it. I recall a restaurant in Williamsburg, Virginia where I ordered a shrimp pasta and the dish that came out was obscenely big, more than enough to serve four adults. A shameful waste of food (I was unable to take it away and it wouldn't reheat well anyway) and I suspect many people will feel pressured to eat as much as they could in order to avoid such waste.

I haven't been to London recently, but was in Paris last October.

I'm frugal by nature. Our strategy was to stay in a hotel that provided a sizable breakfast at no extra charge (had to book it from their own website for free breakfast, other websites were more expensive and charged extra for the breakfast saving us $800 for the week). Then lunch was either a cheap sandwich or salad to go, or even just granola bars. Dinner was our "splurge", probably averaging 30-40 euros per person including wine. We did get meals to go twice from the grocery store across the street. So one doesn't have to go broke just because they've been bit by the travel bug. Unless your main focus is the food. Next years trip to Italy will be different. We are staying mostly in apartments so we can cook some on our own, but sampling local foods will have a greater draw to the two vegetarian members of my family.

Marks & Spencer grocery chain also has some good grab and go options if you want something quick, and they're all over the place. As are the chain pubs that often end up pricing all-in similar to their American chain restaurant peers because the menu price is taxes included and you aren't expected to tip when you order at the pub counter. (Your call on if the teens are allowed the beer or stick to soft drinks when you get the drink included combo meal from one of those places)