Damen Ave. Chicago, IL Enjoy authentic takes on taco classics at chef Paul Kahan's Big Star in Chicago. Particularly of note are the pineapple-topped al pastor, the taco de panza crispy pork belly and the taco de papas con rajas with potatoes and queso cotija.

Portland, OR Bollywood Theater in Portland offers a take on Indian food that is more impressionistic than strictly authentic.

Try the Kati roll, a paratha stuffed with chicken or paneer, egg, pickled onion and green chutney. Dallas, TX At Greenville Avenue Pizza Company in Dallas, everything is made in house, including the sauce.

Loaded pies include the "Mucho Meato" pepperoni, ham, hamburger, sausage and bacon , but there's also the option to build your own pizza or calzone by choosing the size, sauce, cheese, seasonings and toppings from a vast selection.

Philadelphia, PA John's Roast Pork is a South Philly institution. There's the namesake, slow-roasted pork butt tucked into a delightfully seeded Carangi roll with peppery broccoli rabe and melty provolone, but another great bet is the cheesesteak.

San Francisco, CA La Taqueria in San Francisco serves up burritos, quesadillas, tacos and perhaps the most authentic fruit drinks in the Bay Area. The carnitas cooked in lard are meltingly tender, the chorizo is spicy and lean and the carne asada is among the best in the neighborhood.

A Doraville, GA Mamak in Doraville, Georgia, is a tiny, simple but brightly painted restaurant showcasing Malaysian street food.

Fragrant and flavorful noodle dishes include flat noodles with seafood in an egg gravy. New Orleans, LA Other temptations include hot roast beef, catfish, shrimp, oysters and barbecue beef.

Alameda St. In DC, Salvadorans settled in the neighborhoods of Mount Pleasant, Adams Morgan , and Columbia Heights. You'll find several Salvadoran spots in the neighborhood, but Gloria's Restaurant is our favorite.

My favorite spot for a bagel around DC is Bullfrog Bagels. They do incredible smoked meats that taste delicious on top of your bagel!

They've been serving up my favorite bagels in DC since and offer a NY-style bagel that is so good on a Saturday or Sunday, perfect for breakfast before hitting the National Mall or any other fun things you might have going on for the day.

They have locations all across DC, and you can expect to wait a long time in line, so I recommend ordering online before you arrive! Arepas are a Venezuelan dish and stuffed cornmeal cakes that are crispy and fluffy inside.

Arepas are eaten at all times of the day, often as a snack or side dish to a main meal. Just one Arepa tends to fill me up for lunch! Arepa Zone started off as a pop-up in Union Market and now has several locations across DC and one in Northern Virginia.

I still remember when they first opened back in and trying an arepa for the first time. They are so so good! Eastern Market is one of the few historic public market buildings left in Washington, DC, and the only one that has retained its original public market function.

The Eastern Market building is designated as a National Historic Landmark. The market has been in continuous operation since This food hall is open daily and has affordable options inside, but on weekends, tons of spots pop up outside Eastern Market as part of the farmer's market and flea market.

It's a great place to start your day since it's close to the Capitol and many museums in DC. Roaming Rooster started as a food truck in in Washington, DC. Within months, they went viral on social media, and for good reason - their chicken sandwiches are incredible! Since then, the popularity of the only food truck in DC serving tasty free-range chicken has grown massively, and they now have several different restaurant locations around DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

My absolute favorite thing from here is the Nashville Hot Chicken Sandwich. It's so tasty, and they let you choose your spicy level; for me, that's medium to mild HA! While Union Market started as Centre Market, once the largest market in Washington, DC, and opened to the public in By , it was the center of a vibrant commercial life in Washington, D.

Close to a railroad station and streetcar lines, sitting between the White House and the Capitol Building, the market was a crossroads for all of Washington, D. After years of success, it was torn down in to make way for the National Archives.

Undaunted, many of the businesses relocated and created a new venue, Union Terminal Market. This market also does a ton of events, has a rooftop , and does drive-in Friday night movies.

Check out their website for more details on special events! My favorite ramen spot in DC by far is Daikaya. Daikaya serves Sapporo-style ramen, easily recognized by its rich pork base, seasoned with clear broths, curly noodles, and wok-roasted toppings.

Sapporo-style ramen has the most variations among Japan's three most well-known types of ramen, both in terms of ingredients and taste. T aikaya's noodles are imported directly from Sapporo and made by Nishiyama Seimen Company to ensure authenticity.

They are located in Chinatown in downtown DC making it easy to stop in after a long day. Check out these delicious main dish recipes for easy dinner recipes. Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content About Welcome to the Good Cheap Eats Kitchen Media Privacy Policy Disclosure Contact Me Members Only Login Club Homepage Club Resource Library Downloads Live Club Events Recipe Index Blog SHOP Purchases Cookbooks Planner The Good Cheap Eats Club Meal Plans Holiday Helps Search.

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Cheap lunch ideas go beyond the drive-thru of a fast-food restaurant. Our low-cost lunches include grain bowls, pasta, sandwiches, salads What to order: Wendy's is one of the few burger chains where $5 still gets you all three major (fast) food groups: burgers, fries, and drinks Find the best Cheap Restaurants near you on Yelp - see all Cheap Restaurants open now and reserve an open table. Explore other popular cuisines and

Affordable restaurant meals - 61 Cheap Dinner Ideas That Do the Most With the Least · Pasta With 20 Cloves of Garlic · Smoky, Spicy Creole Red Beans and Rice · Vegetarian Cheap lunch ideas go beyond the drive-thru of a fast-food restaurant. Our low-cost lunches include grain bowls, pasta, sandwiches, salads What to order: Wendy's is one of the few burger chains where $5 still gets you all three major (fast) food groups: burgers, fries, and drinks Find the best Cheap Restaurants near you on Yelp - see all Cheap Restaurants open now and reserve an open table. Explore other popular cuisines and

A spacious multilevel palace of Korean food in downtown Fort Lee, New Jersey, Myung Dong specializes in two types of noodles. The first is the wheat noodle known as kalguksu, served in mildly flavored soups, of which the most engaging throws them into a broth with ground beef and dumplings.

The second is naengmyeon, originating in North Korea and made from buckwheat or sweet potato and served cold with boiled egg and pickled vegetables: very refreshing. While this may have once been a Korean seafood market, it now has Dominican flourishes.

In addition to selling the freshest fish, it has a seafood prep counter and pleasant eating-in area. The fried fish sandwiches — pick porgy or flounder — are great and cheap, but why not consider the shrimp pastelitos, stuffed clams, or crab cakes? Yes there are noodles galore, including laksa noodles and peanut satay noodles, but look to fritters, dumplings, and buns for smaller bites.

The roti john sandwich is a unique delight, a hero of ground beef omelet with spicy ketchup and caramelized onions. This branch of a Grand Concourse restaurant is a bit grander, with a dining room a few steps up from the steam table where a dozen or so Ghanaian dishes are displayed.

Get sauces of fish, mutton, or chicken — or pick a mixed meat sauce that contains all of them — then choose a starch ball like white yam fufu to go with it. Harlem has rarely seen a Jamaican steam-table restaurant with such a broad selection of island dishes. The restaurant is one of three locations.

For a larger meal than the falafel sandwich, pick the falafel platter, which contains a dozen elements, including the spicy green relish zhoug. Multiple forms of hummus and the eggplant-and-egg concoction sabich also available at this vegan spot that offers a cauliflower shawarma.

There are still plenty of budget-friendly pasta mills around, a fad that peaked late in the last century and lingered thereafter. These places encouraged you to pick a pasta and match it with a sauce.

In a similar but simpler vein, Bigoi Venezia takes a single pasta — freshly made Venetian bigoi, tube-shaped spaghetti — and offers a choice of a dozen or so treatments, some particular to Venice, some not.

Turkey sauce or peas, ham, and cream are two top contenders. Step up the the gleaming steam table and load up your square ceramic plate with any combo of the two dozen dishes displayed. Pay special attention to the ones called chicken roast smothered in onions , beef kala bhuna a very dark curry , and the daily assortment of bhortas mustard-oil-laced vegetable purees.

Then sit in the sunny dining room and eat with your fingers. The one featuring smoked milkfish is a favorite, also including garlic rice, fried eggs, eggplant, and a fresh salsa of onions and tomatoes. This modest spot just south of the Queens County Farm Museum concentrates on Mumbai-style street snacks and is strictly vegetarian.

One favorite is bun chole, a small round roll stuffed with chickpeas, potatoes, and onions sweetened with tamarind sauce, very much like Trinidadian doubles.

The menu also offers samosa chaats, vegetable curries, milk-based sweets, and snacks combining fried lentils, nuts, chips, and crunchy noodles. Little Jakarta is a small neighborhood centered at Whitney Avenue and Broadway in Elmhurst, with groceries and small cafes a modest number of both to be sure radiating from that corner.

It specializes in full-plate combinations that may contain rice, a coconut-laced composed salad, shrimp chips, and a satay or two, all halal. The fruition of a decade-long series of films, TV shows, podcasts, and professorships from hamburger scholar, George Motz, this new spot in Soho channels the lunch counters of the past.

Specimen regional burgers — currently in a smash burger vein — are offered, along with things like egg creams, french fries, icebox pies, and lemonade. For hamburger deniers, there are PBJs and especially good and inexpensive egg salad sandwiches.

This tiny cafe just south of Tompkins Square specializes in the street food of Bangkok with a limited menu of full meals that will make deciding what to eat easier.

The best dish on the menu is basil chicken, with ground poultry cooked down to a rich mixture served with rice, a poached egg, and boiled sweet potato.

Relax is a great place to relax, tucked away on a side street in the northeastern part of Greenpoint, and made to look like a cottage in a fairy tale.

Wash everything down with Polish beers. Little Myanmar is quite simply the best Burmese restaurant the city has yet to see.

The interior is bare bones and not particularly comfortable — though your ability to see into the kitchen is an advantage and a pleasure. The item menu covers the vast sweep of the national cuisine, from the salads called athokes try the tea-leaf version to noodle soups, stir fries, and curries.

This halal Turkish restaurant is successor to the long-closed Bereket, a late night favorite of clubgoers. Lots of salads, dips, and kebabs at bargain prices, but my preferred choice is a doner kebab in Turkish bread other breads include pitas and flatbread wraps.

Three rotating cylinders of meat are available: lamb, chicken, and veal, each with its own attractions. The Lower East Side is home to many Hong Kong-styles cafes serving the hybrid Chinese-English cuisine called cha chaan tengs.

S Wan is a charming walk-down spot offering a full range of breakfasts designated by letters that might includes fried eggs, waffles smeared with peanut butter, Spam, toast with butter and honey, and pork chops, in addition to lots of noodle soups and stir fries.

Hearty working-class Chinese fare at favorable prices is the forte of this bare-bones shop conveniently located on Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills near the Kew Gardens subway station.

Noodles, dumplings, and soups make up most of the menu, with Sichuan dumplings and dan dan noodles available in memorably good renditions.

This Jamaica Estates Afghan restaurant offers kebabs of chicken, beef, and lamb in various combinations — and little else. The lamb chops, in particular, are superb, often cut to order from the rib cage you can hear the saw thrumming in the kitchen , smeared with a reddish spice rub, and grilled to complete succulence.

A few doors down from a mosque, this chandeliered restaurant occupies a lively corner location that was previously a diner. This place upholds diner principals, filling out its menu with Afghan kebab platters as well as Bangladeshi and Indian dishes, plus pizza and excellent hamburgers.

The platter shown here features yogurt-marinated chicken and beef kofta with pulao rice, Afghan bread, and salad, with several sauces. Toasted nutritional yeast, full of umami, also pushes this easy recipe into a deeply savory, deeply tasty zone.

The relatively long ingredient list—kidney beans, bell peppers, celery , parsley, rice—might not read as a budget meal, but the most expensive item is the andouille sausage. Plus, you can feed six people with this one dish. These veggie enchiladas feature a charred tomatillo salsa verde, Cotija cheese, and, yes, creamy pinto beans.

That same filling would work well in burritos, too. If there happen to be leftovers, that meat and mozzarella and marinara make for a great sandwich the next day.

Store-bought puff pastry and a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken are two very helpful shortcuts when it comes to this one-pot meal. We also developed a soup version of chicken pot pie , just for fun. Giving chunky zucchini pieces a hard sear develops lots of texture and color while minimizing sogginess.

The dilly sour cream provides a garlicky counterpart. When you need a weeknight-friendly recipe that doubles as a cheap dinner idea, stir-fry is the answer. Is there ever a bad time for a quesadilla? This one is easy, cheesy, and a smart way to finish up that jar of kimchi hanging out in the fridge.

Although we and most of our readers love the mixture of nutritional yeast , garlic powder, and onion powder on these vegan nuggets, one commenter was less impressed. If you too crave something bolder, try the method with taco seasoning instead. The humble onion is given center stage in this cheap meal.

Seared, then gently roasted with paprika and tomato paste, these onions prove they have star quality. Transform a can of pumpkin purée into a near-instant pasta sauce—no slow cookers here— that delivers major fall feels.

Bonus: Leftovers will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for two to three days. With a generous layer of caramelized onions and plenty of sharp Gruyère cheese, this tart packs the depth of French onion soup into every bite.

The tofu in this cheap recipe absorbs all of the flavors in the sauce—and there are a lot of them: shallots, ginger, garlic, cumin, red chile, turmeric, coconut cream , and peanut butter.

It all becomes a sauce you have to make and see to believe. Crunchy fried onions transform a simple cabbage salad into a sensorial delight: hot and cold, crisp and soft, sweet and spicy. Make sure to assemble it just before eating in order to capture those different textures.

When the coffers are dry and so is the bread on the counter, this is the one. This cheap meal requires just a few other ingredients, most of which are already in your kitchen. A garlicky mixture of ginger, soy sauce, brown sugar, and maple syrup cooks down until almost sticky in this riff on a Chinese-American classic sesame chicken.

An untraditional but logical addition to the sauce: tahini. You might be surprised by just how flavorful a combination of chicken stock, celery, and chickpeas can be. Garlic, red chiles, lemon, and fresh cilantro contribute to making it so—while still keeping it feeling clean.

If you can swing it, add a big pinch of asafetida for an extra savory note. Quick-cooking, budget-friendly, and pretty hard to screw up that dark meat is automatically juicier , chicken thighs are our default weeknight dinner—and this is our simplest way to prepare them.

These battered, oven-baked florets come out crackly before getting bathed in a sticky-sweet gochujang glaze. It means you have croutons. Ground turkey is a lean protein that, when simmered with white beans, seasonings, and chipotle chiles in adobo and topped with Greek yogurt, delivers major body and richness.

The key to stress-free stir-frying is in the prep work. Be sure to chop, slice, and grate everything before even thinking about turning on the stove. Once you do, it comes together in 15 minutes. A little bit of flour and butter, garlic, lemon juice, and capers , and you've got a super savory supper.

Say that three times fast. This cheap recipe leaves out the smoked pork or turkey, which is typical in the American South, and goes heavy on garlic for flavor. This all-star easy dinner recipe will work long after corn has gone out of season.

In the winter, just sub in shaved cauliflower or torn kale. This soup packs in all the ingredients that would make your doctor happy—lentils, sweet potatoes, leafy greens—but the fiery Thai green curry paste keeps things interesting.

Undaunted, many of the businesses relocated and created a new venue, Union Terminal Market. This market also does a ton of events, has a rooftop , and does drive-in Friday night movies. Check out their website for more details on special events!

My favorite ramen spot in DC by far is Daikaya. Daikaya serves Sapporo-style ramen, easily recognized by its rich pork base, seasoned with clear broths, curly noodles, and wok-roasted toppings.

Sapporo-style ramen has the most variations among Japan's three most well-known types of ramen, both in terms of ingredients and taste. T aikaya's noodles are imported directly from Sapporo and made by Nishiyama Seimen Company to ensure authenticity.

They are located in Chinatown in downtown DC making it easy to stop in after a long day. They do not take reservations, and lines can be long, so I recommend going early to get a spot in line. They're almost always busy. Looking for a good taco around DC?

My favorite spot is Taqueria Habanero. There's a location in Columbia Heights as well as College Park. Plus, President Biden and VP Kamala Harris visited in spring , which brought even more buzz to the restaurant.

I also love this place and find it unique because it's where my husband and I went on our first date! There's so much fantastic food, and this is just a sampling of my favorite places to eat in Washington, DC , but I hope you find this helpful as you look for the best cheap eats in Washington, DC.

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Meghan Elise Jul 8, 7 min read. The Best Cheap Eats in Washington, DC. the cheapest of the Cheap Eats in Washington, DC. Ben's Chili Bowl. Andy's Pizza. Gloria's Restaurant. Bullfrog Bagels.

Arepa Zone. Eastern Market. Roaming Rooster. Union Market. Taqueria Habanero.

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