Saturday's lunch ($25.42)!
Saturday phase-2 sit-down lunch — $25.42 casual restaurant spread. Weekend break at the budget-tier dine-in price.
Saturday lunch with BB — $25.42 sit-down restaurant spread. Budget-to-mid casual restaurant pricing for the weekend break.
We ordered (Saturday lunch):
- A shared main or two small mains
- A side or starter
- Drinks
Total: $25.42 for the spread.
The $25.42 lunch sits in the budget-to-mid casual sit-down restaurant tier — about $12-13 per person. Cheaper than the upper-tier brunch spots, more substantial than hawker centre meals.
The plate(s) were the casual restaurant fare. A protein-and-carb main, a small side dish, drinks. Nothing elaborate but properly executed.
The protein was likely a glazed chicken, grilled fish, or pasta dish — the kind of mid-tier lunch standard that every casual restaurant has on the menu. Cooked properly, plated cleanly.
A small side dish provided the supporting component — usually a sautéed green or a salad with a dressing.
Drinks were the standard restaurant pours.
$25.42 for two on a Saturday sit-down lunch is fair value. The home lunch alternative costs us $4-5 in groceries; the hawker alternative costs $4-5 per plate. The casual restaurant lunch sits between the two, with the upgrade being the sit-down experience.
The pattern across November had stabilised. Weekday home lunches as the steady baseline, occasional weekend restaurant breaks for the variety. The casual restaurant tier at $25-30 is the sustainable price point for the small Saturday treat.
Phase 2 had restored access to the full restaurant ecosystem. By November we’d cycled through enough restaurant tiers to know which formats worked at which pricing points, and the casual sit-down lunch was firmly in the “occasional Saturday treat” slot.
Some lockdown habits earn their permanence; some habits earn their occasional break. The Saturday casual restaurant lunch was the second category — small treat, modest cost, not a routine.
Overall: 4.4 / 5. 😋👍🏼 Solid Saturday restaurant lunch — would repeat occasionally.
