We'll be in Rome and Florence for 15 days (not including travel days). Its me, DH, and a toddler. Hotels includes breakfast. Is $1,500 food budget enough? Hubby thinks we need to up it. I think $1,500 is enough. Any thoughts? Thanks!

PS We tend to go to small, casual places--nothing fancy (we really can't with a toddler).

100 USD/day for 2 adults + toddler is quite low even for casual places (and I'm pretty frugal). I think it's definitely doable if you rent an apartment -- wonderful groceries are relatively cheap and it's easy to prepare proscuitto and fresh mozerella sandwiches, etc. at a very low price.

That would leave you with the "luxury" to stop for much needed snacks, gelato, and coffee breaks throughout the day and leave you with enough for dinner at a pizzeria or trattoria with a prix fixe menu. If you opt for the hotel, I would plan to up your food buget a bit...

It can be done if you're careful. Depends on how much wine you drink, how many soft drinks like Coke you want. Don't feel obligated to order numerous courses in restaurants -- we had no trouble with a salad and pasta course. A few times we stopped into a market for bread, cold cuts and cheese. Other times we stopped at pizzerias. That, combined with nice restaurants, helped our budget.

Hi K,

You can eat nicely for about (pp):

Lunch 15E
Dinner 30E

Wine is extra.

If you get away from the most heavily touristed areas (and actually some places in the tourist areas), you can dine quite nicely for under 30 euro pp with wine if you don't pig out.

For example, at one of my favorite restaurants in Rome, Ambasciata d'Abruzzo, you could:

Share an appetizer-9 euro

For the main dishes:
Hand made pasta stuffed with ricotta cheese and spinach-8 euro
Abruzzese pork-10 euro

Desserts:
Tiramasu-4.50 euro
Creme caramal-4.50

This is really an adequate meal in terms of the amount of food, and a wonderful meal in terms of flavor and presentation (unless the retaurant has changed for the worse recently).

Total 36 euro or 18 euro each for 2 people--leaving a lot of wiggle room for some combination of wine, a second appetizer, another shared main dish or pasta, coffee, etc. and still come in under 30 euro pp.

We had no difficulty eating for 20 euro pp in Rome last March, except for one splurge meal.

Our last night, we ate at a small trattoria (packed with locals) and the bill was only 20 euro total for three of us (3 delicious pizzas, a litre of red house wine and a litre of water). We were so surprised at the low price that we double checked with the owner to be sure there hadn't been a mistake!

I am budgeting roughly the same amount as you for our upcoming trip in July and am hoping it is sufficient. We are staying in apartments and plan to cook at least one meal a day (plus breakfast) ourselves.

We (2 people, one of whom really likes FOOD!) had no difficulty eating 2 meals/day for less than that. We don't drink wine every night, though. We also eat our main meal in the mid-afternoon, then eat lightly in the evening. We had gelato at least 3 times/day, too! Your budget should be absolutely fine.

Thanks for all your replies. I just wanted to make sure my budget is realistic and must importantly we have room for gelato! Because of our little one, we tend to go to the grocery a lot for drinks and snacks (more choices and flexibility). We'll definitely be prepared to raise our budget when we get there (but I hope we don't have to). Thanks again!