There are still lots of places you can get a good meal for twenty Canadian dollars in smaller cities. But certainly not for dinner at Red Lobster, nor even many of the lunches. Food is sometimes pricier out west, though much more so North of the Wall.
A Canuck buck has three-quarter value, but often for restaurants the equivalent is closer to unity.
I was in Ottawa last week, and the food seemed really expensive. Even factoring in the smaller dollar.
(I had some surprisingly good food, though. So there’s that.)
Well part of the poor response may be understood by seeing that the poll created has zero respondents who most expensive meal out has been under $30 per.
So how about this: for those who most expensive meal has been under $50, that’s at least some - why?
Frugality? Value proposition? Never could afford it? Opportunity? Never the right occasion? No interest in higher end dining?
Other?
I live in Chicago and I cannot imagine going to a restaurant for less than $30/person. Hell, going to Five Guys fast food in Chicago costs around $25 for one cheeseburger, small fries and a soda (kidjanot).
If you have alcohol then almost no chance at all.
For me the confusion was the comma: “lowest, highest price meal” to me sounds like you are asking for both lowest and highest experiences. With that wording, I’d’ve gone “lowest highest-priced meal”, but I’d just re-write it because it’s a bit of a mind-bender. (On the other hand, I was talking to someone about Phoenix’s recent new highest low in regards to the weather, today.)
Yeah, at least $30 a head here in Chicago is pretty typical. I can stretch it to $20 a head at some places, if you don’t include tax and tip. All bets are off if alcohol is added to the mix.
If you only count meals that I’ve paid for myself, I’d say $30 per person would probably be a pretty good upper limit, and I doubt the actual highest amount is much above $20 per person. I just don’t eat out at anything resembling fancy places if I’m the one going to be paying. It’s very similar to how I don’t pay to see live music. I’m a very stingy person who is perfectly happy with a very simple life, if only because it’s all I was able to afford for a very long time. I was happy then, and I don’t see myself being happy enough paying for expensive things now compared to the joy of being retired as soon as possible.
My favorite way to see live music is to find a bar that has someone playing (and no cover). Buy a drink, enjoy the music. Obviously you will not be seeing Taylor Swift that way but plenty of good stuff to be had for nearly free (cost of a drink which does not have to be alcoholic…usually).
I’ve had another look at the OP and I’m still not sure what’s being requested.
The thread title is ungrammatical and the OP is unclear. “Please offer any characteristics that might explain your experiences” doesn’t clarify. If I’ve understood you (Dinsdale) correctly, you could have titled it “What’s the most you’ve ever paid for a meal at a bar/restaurant, etc.?” and then explained in the OP that you want to see which poster has paid the least.
Is that it?
Yeah - in my mind, the idea that someone has NEVER paid more than $30 for a meal means they have NEVER eaten somewhere nicer than a nice burger joint like Five Guys. But surely you can imagine spending less than $30 at McDonalds, no?
I can imagine someone who is very frugal or has very limited income, or lives in some out of the way place or inner city and never travels, who either NEVER eats out, or when they do, they NEVER eat anywhere nicer than fast food, a local diner, or fast casual like Denny’s/Cracker Barrel/Applebees… I think we’ve had threads in the past asking how old you were when you had your first restaurant meal. I guess I’m blinded by the fact that I live in an area where so many people seem to eat out so often, that I lose track of people who are in vastly different circumstances and make vastly different choices.
The more I think of it, there probably are a great number of people, in the lowest 10-25% income bracket perhaps, for whom a $30 restaurant meal is an unimaginable luxury. $30 could buy a couple of weeks’ worth of rice and beans for the family… So my (apparently ambiguous) question reveals my blinkered experience. But I did not suspect we had a great many lifelong impoverished posters around here, leading me to suspect that Darren Garrison and other similarly situated posters were acting out of choice.
(Guides available on request for anyone incapable of parsing my impenetrable rambling!) 
I have at one point in my life ( specifically as a child) been in that circumstance, and in my experience there are two ways that it can go - either people save up to have one meal for a special occasion that is the equivalent of $30 or more today ( for example a $10 meal in 1983 would cost about $30 today) or they ate so few meals out at the same type of place that it almost doesn’t make sense to talk about the highest priced meal. If the only place you go in 1985 is McDonald’s , then your highest and lowest prices will be about the same - $2.50 ish for a Big Mac meal (which is about $7 in today’s money) , a few cents more or less if you get larger or smaller fries/drink maybe $1 less if you get a burger rather than a Big Mac. It would have made no sense to talk to my parents back in the 70/80s about the highest priced meal they ever purchased - I do not recall ever going to an actual restaurant or even a fast food restaurant until I was able to pay myself. Before that , the best it got was takeout pizza or Chinese - and what they ordered even today would be about $6 per person. Most people who can afford $60 a year are probably going to go for six $10 meals rather than two $30 meals a year.
Yeah, my estimates above clearly don’t include alcohol. But there are places where you can get steak for that price (of varying quality but a few good ones). The restaurants I prefer are in the twenty dollar range (usually ethnic restaurants with great food, it’s not because of the price), and these are only a little higher than some fast food. But thirty dollars is typical, and fancy or trendy places in big cities can easily be $60-100 per.
When the call center we worked at moved from Tempe to Las Vegas I was part of a crew of four who would go up there for a month to get the newbies up to speed. We were expensed with no limit on the meals but for the three dinners we would eat twice at a buffet, which were still cheap at the time, then splurge on the Wednesday night dinner with a clear conscience. Breakfast was something picked up so we could arise late and make it to work on time and we’d skip lunch so the bosses were getting a bargain food-wise.
I never realized how poor we were growing up. Lifestyles were different then so it wasn’t apparent. I didn’t know anyone who went to restaurants regularly. In my youth we went to a restaurant exactly once. It was a neighborhood Italian place so I’m sure it wasn’t expensive at all. On extremely rare occasions we could get McDonald’s. After my adulthood I came to appreciate a well done restaurant meal. I was probably 30 before I want to a high end restaurant and realized why they were different. I can’t do that often but I hope I’m never in the position where I can’t enjoy the high end experience every now and then.
Sure but is that the most expensive meal you have ever eaten? If I understand the question now you only get the prize if you have the most expensive dinner you ever had is lower in cost than anyone else’s most expensive meal.
I remember my mother commenting that she could feed us at McDonald’s for less than the cost of cooking dinner. I’m sure she could have made rice and beans for less than the McMeal, but she didn’t generally cook that.
I’ll bet not too many people think that now.
Um, excuse me, but you’re conflating eating at a place with paying money for the meal. For a lot of people, those are very different things. A lot of those people simply haven’t ever had their own money to pay for anything because they’re young. And then those people grow up and don’t see the point of wasting money on the expensive meals like their parents had because they weren’t particularly enamored with them compared to what they could fix quickly themselves or get at the grocery store hot food section.
It helps to be utterly uninterested in in-person social experiences. I suppose that can be a very difficult thing for most people to grasp. That’s a larger driver for me than cheapness; if I had a cause to take someone to a nice restaurant I’d possibly be willing to pay for a nice experience, but I simply don’t want to do that particular social interaction for a variety of reasons. Money may be one of the reasons, but it’s not the only one. And when you’re basically always eating by yourself unless someone else invites you out, you’re not going to be spending big bucks at a restaurant.
I’ve actually paid big bucks to treat myself to an especially nice meal, by myself. As takeout.
Did i mention that i really enjoy food?
I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much on a meal. I might’ve been close to that with an alcoholic drink added…
But I’m super cheap about strangely random things.
I live in a very high priced area. Tourist ski area. Everything is expensive. $100 dinners for my wife and I are typical. And I’m not talking about ‘up scale’ places.
We don’t go out to eat that often, so not a big deal.
Me too. All I want for my birthday every year is a nice steak dinner. And my anniversary. And Mother’s Day. And whenever I can get away with it. I usually get to go every two or three months. I budget $60 a month toward fine dining. (Since this is all relative, about $75 a plate.)
I also order in a lot but that’s more along the lines of a bad habit I’m trying to quit. I used to tie my $60 to not ordering in. I’m not sure if it worked.