Life In 19x19

Just a quick ping to the Americans and Canadians out there.

How much do cheap meals cost in Chicago, Toronto, and Niagara Falls (Canadian side)? More specifically, can I get my stomach full if I budget US$10/Can$10 per meal without having to travel from one corner of the city to another corner of the city? Thanks.

I tried to google for this information, but perhaps I didn't use the correct terms. I get a lot of results that lists restaurants with "reasonable prices", but not how much they cost.

Yes, you can actually eat a pretty decent meal for US$10. If you're willing to eat fast-food, you might get by on half that. At Taco Bell, you could eat like a pig for US$5.

Try virtualtourist.com

You won't be eating at fancy restaurants, but definitely yes, $10 is enough to buy lunch in the Chicago area. I'd say the average is more like $7 or $8.

I don't know that I'd wish a meal at Taco Bell on anyone...

In Canada you'll find Tim Horton's freaking everywhere. Sometimes there will be two on opposite sides of the street to catch traffic going in both directions. Might find one in your hotel room. You can get coffee, tea, donuts, bagels, soup, sandwiches, etc. and pay like $6-7 per meal and be pretty satisfied. It'd be a step up in quality compared to McDonald's or similar.

When you're in Niagara, be sure to check out the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum. It's top-notch corny tourist kitsch.

I don't know how taxes work in Singapore, but some tourists from Asia are surprised when they come to America and have tax tacked onto the price of meals. The menu might say that something is $4.99, but then there's tax added onto that when you actually have to pay. In some Asian countries, the price on the menu is actually the price that you pay - but maybe you are already aware of all of this.

So anyway, if you eat out at a fast food place, you can get a decent meal for around $7, after tax, like others are saying.

If you eat at a fast food place, there's no need to tip, so tax is all you have to worry about. If you go to a nicer place that's not a fast food restaurant, you still have to add the tip on to your bill, but then it's also expected that you will leave a tip (unless the service is absolutely terrible).

If you go to a place that requires tipping, the "default" is typically considered to be about 15% of the cost of your meal. If the waiter/waitress was extra good, you can increase the tip. If they gave you bad service, you can leave less. Tipping is technically optional, but the "norm" is to leave around 15%.

You can probably still eat at a "non-fast food" place for less than $10 if you don't eat a lot.

Many thanks for the replies, and it is around the ballpark figure I have in my mind too. Taxes included in the meal is something I have anticipated and known - in Singapore, Goods and Services Tax of 7% is mandatory for establishments whose annual turnover exceeds S$1,000,000 and optional for other establishments; and I've been to Vancouver two years ago so I have an idea how taxes work there.

However, it looks like I have offended many restaurant owners in Vancouver without knowing it because I either never tipped or tipped little. There isn't much of a tipping culture here because restaurants here already include an (optional) 10% service charge, so by default we don't tip. I will try to respect the North American culture and tip the correct amount this time.

And this leads me to my favourite rant regarding visiting expensive places such as United States and Canada. Your US$7.50 "cheap" meal is two to four times the price of a typical meal I have in a Singapore coffeeshop, where no tipping or taxes is required. In this situation, having to tip feels like a bit of a burden to me. On the other hand, Singapore is not the cheapest place on earth, things cost less in our neighbour up north (Malaysia), and the not-so-rich from China, India, and Indonesia would say that things are a lot cheaper in their countries.

unkx80 wrote:However, it looks like I have offended many restaurant owners in Vancouver without knowing it because I either never tipped or tipped little. There isn't much of a tipping culture here because restaurants here already include an (optional) 10% service charge, so by default we don't tip. I will try to respect the North American culture and tip the correct amount this time.

I also think our tipping culture is dumb. I shouldn't have to pay extra to get good service. And even when I get poor service, I feel bad leaving a low tip-- servers are not paid adequately; they depend on the tips to make a living wage.

It's also weird who you tip. You never tip anybody at a fast food place, but you tip your waiter if it's a sit-down place, and you tip the delivery guy for pizza or whatever. But the people at McDonalds work hard too, but no tips. :shrug:

It is weird, but part of it is just a reaction to how the businesses set up the positions (which is in turn based on expectations of tips). If a business thinks an employee may be tipped, they get to pay that employee less... so the employee essentially HAS to be tipped, or have insurmountable financial difficulty.