2AWA: Best Cheap Eats

Eat­ing is impor­tant. So is man­ag­ing your bud­get. These places offer good ways to com­bine the two. When we get cheap food, we want it to sat­is­fy us. We want a good-sized serv­ing, and we want it to be tasty, inter­est­ing and prefer­ably from a nice place to dine. Like these places…

I just found $20, so it’ll be din­ner at:

Cheap eats after the jump…

A. Sweet Mother’s Kitchen

SMK has been a very pop­u­lar place to be in Welling­ton since it opened last year. The cheap­er menu items felt like a prop­er Amer­i­can south­ern din­er and the high­er end mains were good for a prop­er meal.

The menu has changed some­what recent­ly but the prices have stayed the same. An $8.50-$9 po’ boy is still a great option for those on a bud­get.

B. Off-Beat Originals

Sur­round­ed by the detri­tus that most 20-some­things’ will “get” — space­man cig­a­rette can­dies, giraffe-brand milk­shake cups etc — it’s easy to think that this is anoth­er hip­ster cafe. But Off­beat seems sin­cere with their use of kiwi-kid icons and don’t charge an arm and a leg for your own mem­o­ries.

Even with a recent price hike OBO still sails under the radar for cost, and jee­bus their burg­ers are big!

Cheap food, good food. Kind of embod­ies the cat­e­go­ry does­n’t it?

WINNER!!!
C. Satay Kingdom

What can you say about a place that has its own Face­book Group? $5 Roti Chenai (though it is of the frozen vari­ety) is good. The Mee Goreng (for­mer­ly the bot­tom­less plate Mee Goreng) is great. The fried chick­en wings are oily. Some of the stingy among us can even get two lunch­es out of one dish. You got­ta love a place where you can see into the kitchen and hear the hap­py hum of activ­i­ty. Even in the mid­dle of the lunch rush the peren­ni­al­ly perky staff are con­sis­tent­ly on it.

But the best thing about Satay King­dom is the loca­tion. Sit­ting out­side in the stink­ing heat of sum­mer or in the rain under the (new) tent in win­ter, it is all about atmos­phere at Satay King­dom. You can make your approach the tra­di­tion­al way via Cuba, take the sneaky side route up graf­fi­ti alley or enter via the indus­tri­al look­ing entrance on Vic­to­ria St. The way is clear­ly marked by a NZ shaped piece of gum.

D. K.C. Café

This place has the best Chi­nese-style food that you nev­er got in a nor­mal Chi­nese-style take­away food place. Duck? Yep. Squid? Yep. Pig offal? Yep. Oth­er real­ly weird stuff which most gwei­lo would nev­er dream of eat­ing? Yep. And so on. If it was down the end of Lambton Quay instead of in the heart of Courte­nay, we’d take K.C. over Chum­meez any day of the week. And, it total­ly pwns the almost-adja­cent pan-gen­er­a­tional pur­vey­ors of muck J&M Fast Foods.

E. Chocolate Frog

Eat­ing in a Mira­mar gar­den cen­tre should­n’t be so cool … but the Frog man­ages to be. With its old­er and more well-known sis­ter over the hill in Kara­ka Bay, Choco­late Frog have, as the “wet weath­er” ver­sion, a lot to live up to. They take the cool­ness of num­bered rocks, paint­ed chairs and small-as kitchen that we all know and love and mix it up with a view of flow­er­ing plants, funky paint­ings and a kick ass set of staff. And with it being a stone (street) throw from the heart of Welly­wood, who knows what future stars you’re shar­ing your brunchtime with?

Get your eat on with the Zoomin tag “best cheap”