Metro Top 50 Eats Under $25
2024 Winners

Making any list like this is fraught — What are the parameters? What are we missing? What’s become so familiar we take it for granted? — but none more so than one based around price. Of course, this list isn’t about the money (it’s the food, dummy!) but Metro Eats used to be called Cheap Eats for a reason: it’s a guide to the best things to eat in this city under an arbitrary dollar amount. First it was $20, then $25, where it ambivalently remains.

The tension here is between celebrating food that is (to a degree) economically accessible, casual and likely to be a regular part of people’s lives, while recognising that some things just can’t be made that cheaply anymore. $25 ain’t what it used to be. Inflation seems to have hit food harder than almost anything else. A sandwich on Karangahape Rd (whereMetro resides) is regularly $20. A fair reflection of the costs of the labour, ingredients, rent, overheads and everything else required for its making? Sure! Punishing when you eat more than two of them in a week? Definitely!

And that’s the rub. Food is more expensive than it has been in a long time because, in most cases, it needs to be. And yet, for many of us, $20 is a far bigger slice of our weekly budget than $16 was two years ago. Wage inflation is not (in most cases) matching price inflation. Still, among the doom and gloom of the economy, there’s abundance to celebrate here. Old favourites remain as good as ever and it’s heartening to see some of them expand their businesses into other parts of the city. And there are plenty of new places, too — recent openings, fresh discoveries and, as ever, pop-ups finding bricks-and-mortar homes — all spread far and wide across this ever-sprawling city. So get hungry, head out and explore.

Oh, and a final disclaimer: while we have endeavoured to provide accurate opening hours for these 50 eateries, in the post-Covid, staffing-shortages era, they seem to be even more of a moveable feast than usual. Check before you go.