Originally Posted by
Clueless12
OP here. Nice to know there are some similarities to the states with lunches being less expensive. We'll plan on a late lunch with that being our meal out. Great tip on the supermarket dinner! Neither one of us are that particular, so that will work quite nicely.
It's actually (almost?) world wide like this
"Lunch deals", well, probably a few countries don't have them (where food would generally be very cheap), but I've found them in pretty much any country in the world, be it in China, Australia, Singapore, the UAE, Brazil... (and yeah, obviously in Europe)
So yes, if you want to travel on a budget (what seems to be the case here, given it's the budget forum) yet still enjoy dinner in restaurants once a day, take lunch meals. In Germany, you can often get great deals at surprisingly good restaurants for less than 10€ (soup, salad, main, soft drink) - and slightly less "nice" places often have deals for <6€. Other countries can be even cheaper.
In fact, if you're going to Switzerland, lunch deals are probably the only way not to break your budget if you fancy restaurant food sometimes.
The only problem about going to non-touristic places is that, well, they don't tend to cater for tourists, ie they won't have English menus, and depending on the staff, they might not be very interested in explaining you "how it works".
But if you come just AFTER lunch rush hour (but still within the lunch seat meal time), your chances will be better. At 12 pm, when the restaurant is full, they have little to no time for you. But at 1.30 pm, when most guests left, there is a good chance they'll have more time. And the % of Europeans to speak English is much higher than the % of Americans speaking another language than American English
One more thing, many non-touristic restaurants will often be closed (or having no hot food) from 2-6pm (in Spain more like 4-9/10pm) so check what to expect.