HI
You mentioned that you'll spend 4 days somewhere else. Paris is likely to be more expensive than other areas in France, large cities being more expensive in general than smaller towns.
Also, if you head into outer residential areas in Paris (double-digit arrondissements) you'll find lower prices on average than in the center.
However, the Latin Quarter does have a lot of cheap snack bars etc that are student-oriented.
Also, Rick Steves tends to make a lot of low-budget recommendations, you might want to check his book or website.
They have a message board of sorts.

Have three beers, a bottle of water a bag of chips and a tin of sardines on a park bench for 5.19 euro.

My friend and I did this for lunch today outside the Castello Lombardie in Enna, Sicily.

Well, I passed on the sardines. :-D

My sister told me there were a number of Marks and Spencers in Paris. I have used them in Britain. ....very nice off the shelf grocery/take out you can eat and walk with.

Just wondering to all the posters that are mentioning street food. Is this all chesse, bread and meat items? More specifically, can I find broccoli, Carrots apart from salads?

We've found small premade salads at a few boulangeries - the only place I know of to get raw veggies is to go to a produce market (alimentaire) or the grocer. Which means that it isn't 'ready to eat'.

A charcuterie will often have pre-made salads (beet salad, celery remoulade, etc.).

No more Marks and Spencers in Paris, their store closed a few years ago, but there are many, many places where you can get sandwiches to go.

For Sarah- Certainly you can find raw vegetables at the street markets, corner green grocer, or the Monoprix.

Or are you hoping to find them prepared and available as "street food"?

Many Vietnamese-Chinese restaurants offer a midday and often an evening meal for 10 euros or less, and they're popular with Parisians precisely for that reason.

There are many cheap options in the Latin Quarter that allow you to have a very nice sitdown dinner experience. There are many restaurants that offer very good meals at a price of 10 or 12 Euros for 2 or 3 courses. Most of them are very nice, atmospheric places with good service. I found the food better in many of these places than the much higher priced restaurants. House wine is good and is about the cheapest thing you can drink other than water. The tap water is perfectly good to drink. The area around around St Severin church is full of good afforable dining options. For lunch, there are many places selling delicicious baguette sandwichs for 2.5 to 3 Euros.

I haven't seen any mention of quiche. Many boulangeries have a variety of quiches available at lunch and they're yummy...well, except for the one where we discovered some kind of fish between the layers!

yes suz I was wondering if they were in street food.

Quiche works though

Thanks

Hi

For lunch we bought food, wine and water at a supermarket and then picniced in one of the lovely parks there. We had a Swiss Army knife that included a bread knife and corkscrew. Pack some sturdy plastic wine glasses, plates and travel cutlery for your travels.

We had breakfast in our hotel room, supplies from the supermarket again. Bring a heating coil and coffee mugs (heat tolerant plastic) with you. Breakfast was especially nice looking out at the view from our window.

This saved heaps and allowed us to splurge on a good restaurant meal occasionly.

Buon voyage

Cojean has wonderful sandwiches and made-up salads (soup too I think) in the 4 - 6 EUR range. Eat in or take away. Mobbed around 1 - 1:30 but empty at noon.

4 rue de Seze, 8th
19 rue de la Monnaie, 1st
17 bd Haussman, 9th
53 bd du General Martial Valin, 15th

The very cheapest way to eat is the pre-made sandwiches available in all railway stations and a lot of metros. Not inspiring but tasty and cheap, around 3 EUR.

In Nov. 2004 my wife and I spent 7 nights in Paris and 6 in London for $1804 ($139 per day) not including air fare and hotels. The GBP was at $1.80 and the Euro at $1.30.

The $139 per day includes all expenses; train fare (Winchester and Norwich from London), rt transport from airport to hotels, museum entrances, gifts, Tube and Metro, one of our dinners in London was $93 and the most expensive in Paris $82 (full bottles of house wine, not carafes). Both were 3 course. Our lunches were often in museums and churches and our breakfasts were covered in the hotel. We also enjoy the lunch in the Galeries Lafayette cafeteria and the Crypt at St. Martin's in the Fields.

We have the advantage of having visited both cities numerous times so our daily costs are certainly less than a first time visitor and we have a few inexpensive restaurants that we frequent. This trip we tried 2 new ones in Paris, ate in one 3 times and the other twice. Both were suggested by the hotel.

You should be able to average less than 60 Euros for dinner, particularly without wine.

About the veggie meals: lots of bakeries and patisseries, as well as other sorts of food shops have quiche or quiche-like little cheese and broccoli or other vegetable tarts, and similar items.

I am a sort of low budget foodie, and I use Sandra Gustafson's Great Eats in Paris as a good guide to finding tasty budget meals. I don't generally care for Rick Steves' dining suggestions, but you could use both books to cross reference.

We have picnicked in our hotel room in Paris on two different trips. Both times it was at the end of the trip and we were overly sated with dining out. We walked along a great market street (a bit upscale) in the 6th, and just bought a bit of cheese, some bread, some salad, a bit of roast chicken and a couple of pastries at various shops. Took it back to the room and ate before packing for a morning departure.

Can anyone one think of the name of this street, which I believe ran east-west and was full of really nice food shops? I know that isn't much to go on.

It wasn't Rue de Buci, was it? I know it's full of food stalls, but I seem to recall a lot of food "stores" as well.

Maybe... we were there in the late afternoon/early evening, and one or two stalls were operating, as well as 6 or 7 nice stores (candy, prepared food, boulangerie, etc.).

Gee, now I want to go to Paris so I can check for sure!

"You mentioned that you'll spend 4 days somewhere else. Paris is likely to be more expensive than other areas in France, large cities being more expensive in general than smaller towns."

Wow, you think? We here on the farm would never have guessed that.

"Also, if you head into outer residential areas in Paris (double-digit arrondissements) you'll find lower prices on average than in the center."

Gee, maybe we should just stay home. That's even further from the center of Paris,. So it would be much cheaper.

I can't resist the sarcasm. How else can you respond to someone who thinks that you are so ignorant that you don't know the obvious.

Worse yet, she says I should look at Rick Teeves? The man would not a decent restaurant if it fell on him.

You asked and elaine responded...with good advice.

If you read between the lines, you will figure out what she was saying. If you want a better meal without spending the extra $$, take the metro out to the farther reaches (it's still Paris!). If you do a little research you'll find there are actually people who SEEK OUT those out of the way places for their "authenticity".

For cheaper meals in Paris, you'll find lots of places serving "moules et frites", mussels and fries. There's a chain called Leon Bruxelles. Good meal, not expensive. Their creme brulee is very good.

I, too, would be interested in info on creperies open at night and serving "dinner crepes".

As for the countryside, we took into account exactly what elaine pointed out. When doing our budget, we could allow more for meals in Paris because of the lower costs in the smaller towns. Made perfect sense to me!