Photograph by Daniel Peach/Chai Pani Restaurant Group
For many of us, it’s a rite of passage. We graduate high school, strike out for college and, fending for ourselves for the first time on a tight budget, search for cheap places to eat.
I evolved from McDonald’s drive-thrus to sit-down meals at Waffle House and meat-and-three places. As my palate expanded, I developed a love affair with foods exotic to my childhood, particularly the spices of Mexican and Asian cuisines.
That endless quest for affordable and good food has stayed with me. Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always had a nearby go-to cheap place to dine. In Macon, there was the soul food of the fabled H&H Restaurant and a barbecue joint that Otis Redding once frequented.
In Rhode Island, my house was in an Italian neighborhood, and there was an excellent pizza place around the corner that served traditional fish and chips on Fridays. In Las Vegas, there was a humble Thai restaurant that had a laab dish that I can still almost taste 20 years later.
I’ve carried that tradition of looking for cheap eats into my overseas travels. In Paris, it seemed I had a new “best meal of my life” almost every night, all at quaint restaurants that charged less than $20 for the experience. In Hong Kong, I explored the Temple Street Night Market in Kowloon and had my first taste of Asian street food. I also ate an 85-cent bowl of soup for lunch at the Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island. The ingredients remain a mystery to this day, but it was delicious and the bowl was huge.
Atlanta, of course, is a movable feast for food explorers on a budget. Buford Highway and Duluth are meccas of affordable Asian cuisine. Through the years, I’ve stretched dollars at Eats and Majestic Diner on Ponce de Leon Avenue and at Zyka and Chai Pani in Decatur. La Fonda Latina and Fellini’s Pizza helped me avoid bankruptcy during college.
Cheap eats have an important role in the culinary ecosystem. Fine dining is great, but for most of us, that is a special occasion. With cheap eats, we can indulge ourselves anytime.
Breaking bread with friends and family is one of the hallmarks of our culture. It’s an important part of how human beings build community and kinship. When I think of cheap eats, I think of friends getting together to catch up with one another or to celebrate an accomplishment. I think of families gathering for holidays or to mark a birthday.
In this age of convenience and rush, however, we’ve become addicted to the cheapest of the cheap—fast food—and eat far too many meals in the car rather than at a shared dining table. And that comes with a cost.
In Thailand, people in a group don’t order individual dishes at a restaurant; they order a complete meal and everyone at the table shares in it. It’s their version of family-style dining. Sharing food becomes a joyous occasion, a means to celebrate simply being together. It strengthens and creates bonds. You don’t get any of that ordering a spicy chicken sandwich in the drive-thru.
Convenience is not always our friend. As we lose the ritual of gathering together for food, it feeds the social alienation and isolation that permeates modern society. The family unit becomes a group of individuals constantly going off in separate directions and seldom coming together. Everyone is on their own schedule, doing their own thing. Everyone is so busy.
As human beings, we have a deep need for love and belonging. We don’t get that from typing on a keyboard or staring at our phones or eating in our car. As Dr. Brené Brown says, when those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to.Editor’s Journal: Cheap eats—where budgeting and belonging meet
Food is the oldest and easiest way for us to be social and build community, whether it’s served in a family dining room or at the table of a good restaurant with your family of choice. We hope this month’s list of cheap eats in and around Atlanta will inspire you to take a minute, gather good friends, and go eat good food.
And belong.
This article appears in our May 2025 issue.
