How Much Does a Local Dish Cost? $2 to $22 by Country (2026)

A bánh mì and a pastel de nata are both $2 in the index, a tonkotsu ramen and a plate of Texas brisket are $11.50 and $26.50, and between those four dishes sits most of what a traveler will pay for local food anywhere in 61 countries.

The finding

Across 1,795 priced dishes in the food guides of the single-country itineraries in a corpus of 238 AI-generated trips, the median local dish costs $2 in India and Sri Lanka and $22 in Switzerland, an 11× spread, with the United States and Japan tied at $11.50 in the middle. The 61 countries with ten or more priced dishes hold 1,729 of the 1,795. The figures are modeled dish prices from the Trip Cost Index, the midpoint of each dish's price range, not menu prices.

• $2 to $3.50 buys the median dish in India, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, the Maldives, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan.
• $6.50 to $11.50 is Spain, Greece, France, Italy and Portugal, with Italy at $11.
• $12 to $22 is the United Kingdom, Croatia, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Belgium, the Faroe Islands and Switzerland; the Netherlands ($5.50) and Germany ($7) sit far below their neighbors.
• The United States is $11.50 on the largest sample, 293 dishes, the same median as Japan.
• Street food and restaurant food are in one table. The index does not separate a stall from a sit-down plate, so a country's median mixes both, and a dish is one plate, not a meal.

Median dish price by country

Country	Dishes	Median	Country	Dishes	Median
India	106	$2.00	Albania	19	$6.50
Sri Lanka	28	$2.00	Spain	68	$6.50
Egypt	28	$2.50	Namibia	14	$6.50
Kenya	10	$2.50	Georgia	10	$6.80
Tanzania	10	$2.50	Germany	37	$7.00
Vietnam	20	$2.50	Ethiopia	14	$7.00
Cambodia	18	$3.00	Poland	18	$7.00
China	74	$3.20	Argentina	25	$7.50
Maldives	18	$3.20	Hungary	15	$7.50
Indonesia	43	$3.50	New Zealand	14	$7.50
Thailand	42	$3.50	Romania	10	$7.50
Taiwan	10	$3.50	Austria	31	$8.00
Mexico	16	$3.80	South Korea	16	$8.50
Ecuador	10	$3.80	Greece	56	$9.50
Malaysia	26	$3.80	Canada	16	$9.50
Bolivia	10	$4.20	Chile	11	$9.50
Kyrgyzstan	10	$4.20	France	32	$9.80
Morocco	18	$4.20	Italy	75	$11.00
Jordan	10	$4.50	Portugal	53	$11.50
Laos	10	$4.50	United States	293	$11.50
Philippines	28	$4.50	Japan	37	$11.50
Uzbekistan	10	$4.50	United Kingdom	58	$12.00
Kazakhstan	10	$5.00	Croatia	10	$12.50
Oman	10	$5.00	Norway	10	$13.00
North Macedonia	10	$5.20	Iceland	24	$13.20
Netherlands	30	$5.50	Ireland	15	$14.00
Peru	10	$5.50	Belgium	18	$14.20
Saudi Arabia	10	$5.50	Faroe Islands	10	$21.50
Singapore	15	$5.50	Switzerland	38	$22.00
Dominica	10	$6.20
Australia	12	$6.20
Russia	10	$6.20

Source: Trip Cost Index 2026, pulled August 7, 2026. Every priced dish in the food guides of single-country itineraries, midpoint of each dish's price range; countries need at least ten priced dishes. Medians throughout.

How much is street food in Thailand?

The median dish in Thailand is $3.50 across 42 priced dishes, the same as Indonesia and a little above Vietnam at $2.50 and Cambodia at $3. That is one plate, stall or sit-down mixed, not a meal; two or three plates make a meal at $7 to $10.50. Read across Southeast Asia and the band is narrow: Laos and the Philippines at $4.50, Malaysia at $3.80, Singapore the outlier at $5.50. A traveler moving between those countries can hold one food budget for the whole route.

Whether the band is narrow because the guides price more stall plates in Southeast Asia and more sit-down plates in Europe is not something the index records; it publishes the medians and the dish counts, not the dish types.

How much does a meal cost in Italy?

The median dish in Italy is $11 across 75 priced dishes, and the index prices a pizza napoletana at $12.50. A dish is one plate; a sit-down meal of two or three runs to $22 to $33 before drinks, and the index has no line for a cover charge. Among the five Southern European rows named here, Italy is the second dearest: Spain is $6.50 across 68 dishes, Greece $9.50 across 56, France $9.80, Portugal $11.50. Portugal's median sits above Italy's even though its best-known dish, the pastel de nata, is priced at $2; a country median follows the plates the guides priced, not the pastry.

Two dishes frame those five rows: a gyros in Greece at $4.50 and a pizza napoletana in Italy at $12.50. Each of the five medians sits between them.

What does food cost in Japan per day?

The index does not measure food per day directly. It gives two medians that combine: the median Japanese dish is $11.50 across 37 dishes, and food is a median 25% of a trip's total budget across all 238 itineraries. At Japan's $400 a day for two, that is about $100 a day on food for a couple, or roughly four priced dishes each, which is a plausible day of a market breakfast, a set lunch, a bowl of ramen and a late snack. The per-day figure is derived from two medians, not measured on Japanese trips alone, so treat it as a planning number.

The same arithmetic across the per-day table gives about $28 a day on food for two in Indonesia, $63 in the United States and $90 in Germany, and it inherits every caveat of both tables.

The eight dishes behind the headline

Dish	Country	Index price
Bánh mì	Vietnam	$2.00
Pastel de nata	Portugal	$2.00
Koshary	Egypt	$2.50
Tacos al pastor	Mexico	$3.00
Gyros	Greece	$4.50
Tonkotsu ramen	Japan	$11.50
Pizza napoletana	Italy	$12.50
Texas BBQ brisket	United States	$26.50

These are the index's own iconic-dish examples, one per country, chosen from the guides for recognizability rather than as a sample. They show the range better than the medians do: a brisket plate at $26.50 is more than ten times a bánh mì, and both are the dish a food-first traveler goes to that country for.

What the number is not

These are modeled dish prices. Each figure is the midpoint of the price range attached to a dish in a generated food guide, then the median per country. They are not menu prices, not receipts, and not independently verified. A country's median mixes stalls and sit-down plates, weights toward whatever dishes the guides chose to price, and says nothing about a specific restaurant.

The stall or the menu is the price on the day. A generated itinerary carries a food guide with a priced dish list for the destination and a budget split that puts food beside the hotel, transport and tickets, which is where a per-dish figure becomes a trip figure. This table is what to hold that guide against.

Methodology

The corpus is the 238 AI-generated itineraries in the Trip Cost Index 2026 (of 240 generated by MonkeyEatingMango's planner; two lacked a budget range), covering 75 countries, pulled on August 7, 2026. Dish prices are every priced dish in the food guides of the single-country itineraries in that corpus, 1,795 dishes, using the midpoint of each dish's modeled price range in USD. Countries need at least ten priced dishes to appear; 61 do, holding 1,729 of the 1,795 dishes. The iconic dishes are the index's hand-curated examples. Medians throughout, no averages. The Japan per-day figure combines the dish median with the index's median food share (25% of trip budget) and Japan's per-day median ($400), and is labeled as derived. The full method, the cost-per-day table, museum entry and budget splits are on the Trip Cost Index page.

Related reading

• Trip Cost Index 2026: the source table
• Museum tickets: US median $25, Vietnam $2: the museum-entry table from the same corpus
• A 14-day trip costs $98 a day; a 3-day trip costs $333: cost per day by trip length
• Bangkok itinerary, 5 days: a plan in the $3.50-a-dish band

Last updated September 2026.