Cost of eating in France?

[cat811]

Have posted this in Travel too, but hoping for more replies here!
Does anyone know roughly how much it costs to eat in France? Were trying to budget for our holiday, and it'd be good to get a vague idea of how much 'sandwich'y types meals are, and meals out (in non-expensive places)
Is food generally cheaper or more than in the UK?
I know this is probably a 'how long's a piece of string question'....!
Thanks...

It is an how long is a peice of string question, and it also depends alot on where you are going.

A standard "routiers" type restaurant will have set 3 course menus for about 12? a head. Sandwich places usually sell a large baguette sandwich for about 4.50?.

Better restaurants or more touristy restaurants are 18-25? a head.

Depends on where in France you are, we found the Alps very expensive. We dont eat out though generally and take a lot of food and just buy fresh stuff in the supermarkets

If you go to the really big supermarches (LeClerc, SuperU, etc) they always have big food court/cafe's that do decent food, fo reasonable prices. Lots to choose from.

We used them a lot for large lunches and then bought nice cheese, pate, etc for evening (and wine!)

We found a very easy way to massively cut costs when eating out in France was to just drink water with the meal (the tap variety - just ask for "un pichet de l'eau", or something like that).

A set menu of, say, ?9 is good value; add in a couple of ?3 beers/oranginas each and it's not looking so good. That's where the restaurants make their money.

Cat811 where abouts are you going, there's lots of regional variation.

I know others, like myself live in France. This week I've had a 3 course lunch for 11 ? and a small salad for the same amount. I found sandwiches vary between 4-6?
I would personally avoid some of the really big supermarkets as we find them expensive to buy from. We find shopping in Lidl and Aldi much, much cheaper. You can do a great shop for a comparable amount to England. They don't sell baguettes in our local ones though.

Sorry - I lost this thread somehow! Thank you for all the info - very helpful. We're going to the north, with my parents (who will probably want to eat out more than we would usually budget for if we went alone, hence needing to know rough costs)