My husband and I and three children (including two teenage boys) are staying in Lucca for a week and I am looking for a cost effective way to feed my family. I am looking for reasonably priced eating establishments and/or tips on grocery shopping. We will not have a car at our disposal but arriving by train from La Spezia. Thank you P.S. We are renting an apartment close to Villa Bottini called 'Casa Bottini' which is located just above a restaurant.
Well, if you have an apartment, shopping the markets and cooking pasta with the sausages and vegetables you'll find saves a lot of money. Eat slices of pizza or sandwiches when you're walking around.
Lucca's best restaurants are pretty moderately priced. Trattoria da Leo is really good. It's associated with a lunchtime outdoor wine bar just down the block that is very inexpensive.
My husband and I really enjoyed Pizzeria-Trattoria Rusticanella at Via S. Paolino, 32. Good, cheap and fun.
Rosemary
I agree with Doug- Trattoria Leo was excellent - one of the better meals we had in Italy at an reasonable price.
Go to, I think it was simply called Cecchini, on Via del Toro. In addition to cheap pizza, they make Lucca's specialty, cecchini, which is a flat pizza-like fried chickpeas. It sounds bizarre, but it was DELICIOUS and they kept running out. We would have got seconds (or thirds! or fourths!), but it's a tiny place and the line was out the door.