The cheap and not so cheap in London

As you guys may know, London is a VERY expensive city to live in. And given I am on an intern’s salary, I find myself pretty much constantly evaluating the prices of things here vs. what they would be in Canada to ensure I am not overspending. Here are some observations:

Grocery stores

·         Buying non-junk food (i.e. tomato sauce, pasta, veggies, etc) costs about the same as it does in Canada after factoring in the exchange rate. i.e. 10GBP worth of groceries at a grocery store here works out to be about the same $16.40 worth of groceries at Loblaws

·         Produce (chicken, beef, eggs) is oddly way cheaper here. i.e. 500g of chicken costs like $10 in Canada and would be like $7.50 here.

·         Given the demographics here, obviously there is A TON more Indian food than Chinese, or tex-mex. But it’s cool; I’ve had the opportunity to make some awesome (and fast) dishes I never would have been able to make in Canada!

·         There are so many candy bars here that don’t exist in North America and look sooooooooo gooooooood and cost about the same as in Canada. I wish I could eat them all.

·         Given the size of the UK’s population, there are several main grocery store chains. But I live closest to 2 of them- Tesco and Sainsbury. The prices at both seem to be about the same. (although apparently Tesco is supposed to be cheaper)

Eating out

·         I checked out the Lonely Planet’s guide for food and what restaurants they recommended at the lowest price range possible. One of such restaurants was this Mexican place called Taqueria.  The dish I ordered (which was average priced on the menu) was 6.50GBP or about $10.50!! I don’t know about you guys but to me, a cheap meal is <=$5, not <=$10! These London pricing standards…

·         So restaurants are by definition then, really expensive. Having explored lots of London (the reasonably safe areas of London, anyways!) it seems the best option for really cheap eating out is random hole-in-the-wall restaurants serving Lebanese, thai, etc. You can get a good amount of food for about 3.50-4GBP (which is about $5.50 tops). That is about as cheap as it is going to get for eating out.

Beer

·         Prices for beer in the grocery store are what you’d expect by deregulated liquor standards. You can get 4 bottles of anything for like $5 tops.

·         In pubs, I’ve found beer actually is not that cheap. A pint in an average pub for an average beer comes to about $5.50 which is maybe only $0.50 cheaper than what it would be in Canada. The cost savings come into play in the fact that you don’t need to tip. So when you pay $5.50, it actually is $5.50 and not $6.50 after tipping ;-)

·         In night clubs, the price of alcohol is the exact same as what it is in Canada. You are getting ripped off per bottle to the max and end up paying about $7-8 per bottle. But again, no tips here, so that helps soften the blow, at least a little.

So yeah, when you are living in London, when someone says something is “cheap” be aware that the standard for cheapness is much different here than in North America or even mainland Europe!