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”