Mid week's dinner ($52.95)!
Wednesday mid-week sit-down dinner — $52.95 restaurant spread. The mid-tier dine-in pricing point.
Wednesday mid-week dinner with BB — $52.95 sit-down restaurant spread. The mid-tier dine-in pricing point that we’d settled into as the sustainable post-circuit-breaker rate.
We ordered (mid-week dinner):
- Two mains
- A shared side
- Two drinks
Total: $52.95 for the spread.
The $52.95 dinner sits at the sweet spot of sit-down restaurant pricing. Substantial enough to feel like a proper restaurant meal, restrained enough not to require special-occasion justification. Roughly $26 per person for sit-down dinner is the fair-value zone.
Mains were the focus. Both came as proper restaurant-tier plates — a quality protein with sides, cooked to order, plated cleanly. Probably a steak-and-vegetable plate and a seafood or pasta option to cover different cuisines.
A shared side added the supporting component — a small portion of seasonal vegetables, garlic bread, or a salad.
Drinks were the standard restaurant pours — soft drinks, iced tea, or basic coffee.
$52.95 for mid-week dinner is fair pricing. The home dinner alternative would’ve cost us $5-8 in groceries, so the splurge is real. But the mid-week dine-in break has its own value — different surroundings, conversational shift, the small act of going out for a change.
The pattern across October had its rhythm. 4-5 home weekday lunches/dinners + 1-2 mid-week dine-in breaks + the occasional Friday night splurge. The split made each format feel like its own thing rather than competing routines.
Phase 2 was deep in. The post-circuit-breaker dining rhythm had stabilised. Restaurants had figured out their reduced-capacity operations; we had figured out our split between home and dine-in.
Some lockdown habits earned their permanence; some habits earned their occasional break. The mid-week dine-in dinner was the second category.
Overall: 4.2 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Reliable mid-week dinner at the right pricing — would repeat.
