September is historically a travel month. IBC in Amsterdam is an essential stop in our business year, and we often head off on side trips to visit clients and do a little sight seeing. Therefore the absolute amounts we spent on food are a lot higher than when we spend most of the month at home.
The averages for this month:
- Lunch prepared at home $2.47 ($2.72 in August)
- Lunch eaten or purchased outside the home: $9.39 ($11.80)
- Dinner eaten at home: $7.28 ($4.98)
- Dinner eaten out: $15.05 if averaged with the $5 pizza, otherwise $16.72 ($19.48)
The averages are fairly consistent with previous months. With a variety of lunch and evening meals out, they balance out in the averages.
Our most expensive meals were paid for by someone else (thank you LumaForge and Ronny Courtens), but of those we paid for ourselves Eatcafe Koevoel was one of the two best. The other is Riva (hosted by LumaForge). These were two very different, but excellent meals.
Our favorite restaurant in Amsterdam is Dos, our local near where we stay in Jordaan.
Lunches out tend to be 4-5 times more expensive than those prepared at home, while evening meals run about 2.5 x meals at home, because this month we had two of the most expensive meals we’ve prepared at home: the filet mignon on the 30th.
Had we purchased every lunch and prepared none it would have cost us $281.70 per person in August. We actually spent $22.23 for lunches at home (because of the travel) plus $169.09 for lunches purchased or eaten out: $191.32.
Had we purchased every evening meal out and prepared none at home, it would have cost us $451.50. We actually spent $123.68 for dinners at home and $105.33 for dinners out: $229.01.
We saved $377.92 by preparing and eating most meals at home, plus we have better control over what we eat.
Over the month we prepared 12 different recipes for evening meals, because we ate out more in Amsterdam.