I'm going to be travelling in St Louis, Nashville, & then Memphis for a week for work and I get only $40 a day as my stipend so I can't afford to eat anywhere nice.
I figure breakfast will be around $10, Lunch, maybe $10, and $20 for dinner.
Are there any half decent restaurants in safe places that are relatively cheap? I only ask because the last trip I took, I witnessed too much of the Pic Related, where ghetto ass people are just shouting & fighting. It's actually kind of scary when you're travelling alone and have nobody with you.
What's cheap & safe besides fast food in flyover states?
>St Louis >Memphis >trying to avoid pic-related on a budget You have better odds of ice skating to the moon by the weekend
Matthew Gomez
Those are not flyover states. They are havens for good bbq and white trash and pavement apes. Flyover states have no unique culture or redeeming value. Like Ohio or Nebraska.
Landon Williams
Ruths Chris, Macaroni Grill, Fishbone Grill, Cheesecake Factory, Maggianos, McCormick and Schmidt. Those are all flyover "fine dining" standbys where the local ham planets who are not desperately impoverished go for their wedding anniversary or to celebrate promotions or whatever in their best Van Heusen and Dockers dress pants and finest least mud-encrusted snow boots. You should be fine going to those joints. Some of them might cost more than $40 if you want to have a drink with dinner but it shouldn't be too crazy.
Christian Rodriguez
Maybe if I stay away from the main stream chain restaurants, would that help?
I'd imagine a small Asian or ethnic restaurant in the midwest wouldn't be all filled with thugs?
My company is cheap as fuck and we only get $40 a day, so that leaves me about $20 for dinner. $20 won't cut it with drink and tip at any of those restaurants.
That's why I'm looking for cheap + safe
Luis Mitchell
>St Louis bbq >Nashville bbq >& then Memphis bbq
that was fuckin hard
dipshit
Nolan Robinson
You do earn a salary, don't you?
Drinking alcohol is optional.
You would be paying for your own food if you weren't traveling.
The point of a meal stipend is to offset the increased cost vs. eating at home and preparing your own meals. If you run around expecting to get every meal under the daily limit you're just going to end up wasting time and being stressed out all the time.
Logan Martin
>>St Louis >bbq >>Nashville >bbq >>& then Memphis >bbq
Yeah. Good bbq dining with the usual suspects. Great suggestion.
>The point of a meal stipend is to offset the increased cost vs. eating at home and preparing your own meals
wat?
Every company I've worked previously gives you a stipend to cover ALL food expenses. Its one of the few perks you have for being forced to be on the road for weeks at a time.
My previous sales job covered up to $125 a day. My current stipend doesn't even cover me, much less a client.
Tyler Cook
Hate to break it to you geography illiterate 'mericans. But flyover states include all states not on either coast. And yes, most of the US black population live in flyover states.
Oliver Morris
I think you're confusing an expense account with a stipend
John Rogers
Farmers Market in Nashville has okay options for your price range but nothing there is spectacular. I like the Jamaican place there the best. Pretty cheap.
There’s several good Vietnamese places on Charlotte Ave. that are cheap as fuck. I like Kien Giang the best, closed on Monday and cash only. Korea House on Charlotte is also very good but I wouldn’t quite classify it as cheap (for Nashville), like $15 per meal.
BBQ places, the trendy ones in decent parts of town, aren’t that cheap but are good. Martin’s is my favorite. Same thing for the hot chicken places. Hot chicken is good but it’s not some magic dish.
Slim and Husky’s for pizza. $10 for the smaller sized one which is plenty for one person. It’s in a black neighborhood so if you can’t handle that don’t bother.
Typical Mexican fare can be had at a variety of places. More authentic and less expensive stuff can be gotten from taco trucks in gas stations. I like the one on Murfreesboro Rd. past Thompson.
Arnold’s Country Kitchen for classic meat and three. Cheap as fuck. In a gentrifying black neighborhood. If you’d prefer a cheap meat and three in a white part of town try Rotiers over by Vandy.
Browns Diner is another option, typical dive joint. Burgers etc
Easton Kelly
You might be right. But our HR doesn't distinguish between the two. Actually, the past few companies all make us "expense" our stipend. You still have to file a report at the end of the trip. Either way, it's just semantics. In practice, they give you $$ to cover food for the day.
Lincoln Williams
>flyover >T&E expenses capped at $40 Sounds like a fucking homecoming to me. Are you a bathroom cleaning consultant? Corporate burger flipper?
Connor Ortiz
Nope. Sales engineer. And yes, my company is cheap & stingy as fuck. That's been covered.
Andrew White
>Typical Mexican fare can be had at a variety of places. More authentic and less expensive stuff can be gotten from taco trucks in gas stations. I like the one on Murfreesboro Rd. past Thompson.
This is actually not a bad suggestion for OP. You get pretty decent food for under $20 and you won't get robbed by the Mexicans like you would outside a BBQ joint.
why not spend a few more bucks over your stipend and go to a nice place you cheapass?
Luke Young
I mentioned it in my post, and those two sentences are all it deserves. Marinated chicken rubbed with a really spicy paste and fried. It’s good, but people treat it like some sort of fucking delicacy and it isn’t. It’s just meme shit. OP should seek it out only if he doesn’t want to endure the scorn/disbelief of his coworkers for not standing in line for 45 minutes at Princes to eat some friend chicken on top of white bread and pickles.
Adam Walker
>sales engineer Sure buddy, and I'm a sanitation consultant.
Ethan Cruz
And i touch strangers feet for a living. If my T&E is capped at $40 a day I'm necking myself, fo real dawg.
Gabriel Russell
Just go to Waffle House and don't be a fucking pussy about it. If you're too petrified of the coloreds to eat at a God damn restaurant, then you have no business interacting with other adults in the real world.
Jackson Scott
lol @ you Veeky Forums degenerates thinking sales engineer is some tough job or something.
I mostly just set up demos for customers, walk them through the process, and then take them out to dinner.
I am flattered though. lol
Christopher Long
Welcome to Veeky Forums
You should try talking about international travel here, if you've ever left the borders of the US it's basically assumed you're either lying, or you're in some way connected to the US armed forces
Except on /trv/, where you're either a kontiki package tourist who eats at McDonalds everywhere he goes, or a dirtbag Real Traveller who hasn't bathed in months
Unless of course you have had sex, in which case you're a pedophile sex tourist
James Gomez
So you're literally Dwight Schrute.
Samuel Foster
No, we just understand why you are on such a tight leash. Retard job with a title. Again, if I got 40$ a day id be done right quick.
Juan Morris
>40$ retard
Gavin Parker
Also: how we know you are lying. If you were T&Eing clients on that your company wouldn't be in business. Good bait, lots of responses 8/10
You can believe whatever you want to believe sweetie.
And no. I can't take anybody out on $40 and I don't plan to on this trip, I can barely get a decent meal for myself.
Ethan Thompson
>company changes per diem policy >Used to be by contract, whatever wasnt spent was saved for the next trip, whatever isnt spent at the end is released back to the client >Nice hotels, upgraded rental cars, $75 dinners etc >Now its location based as deemed by the company >Set amount for hotel, set amount for car, $X for food per day but anything not spent goes into my monthly check Long story short, whats a good local barbeque place in San Antonio? I used to go to tourist traps on the riverwalk for convenience sake but since its my money now I need to know the good stuff
Hudson Morales
Guess we got lucky but ive been to st louis once memphis twice and nashville three times. While im sure they were peppered through out the mix i dont specifically recall interacting with any black people or witnessing any typical black behavior. We stayed in a very nice hotel in downtown st louis. Ive heard its one of those thinhs were you nust dont cross the river after sunset. Ib both nashville and memphis we stayed on the strip so mostly white tourists and musicians. Definitely plan on eating bbq twice a day.
Robert Davis
>memphis we stayed on the strip I live near memphis and there is literally nowhere that is referred to as "the strip." Are you talking about hotels near Beale Street? If you hung out there you interacted with large numbers of nogs.
