How a 36-Year-Old Restaurant Chef Eats on $70K in Portland, Maine

Jump ahead:
The finances
The diet
The expenses
The diary
Monday total: $114.50
Tuesday total: $0
Wednesday total: $40
Thursday total: $22
Friday total: $26
Saturday total: $95
Sunday total: $86.67

Welcome to The Receipt, a series documenting how Bon Appétit readers eat and what they spend doing it. Each food diary follows one anonymous reader’s week of expenses related to groceries, restaurant meals, coffee runs, and every bite in between. In this time of rising food costs, The Receipt reveals how folks—from different cities, with different incomes, on different schedules—are figuring out their food budgets.

In today’s Receipt, a 36-year-old restaurant chef and owner living on $70,000 a year cooks meals with his staff and eats dinners at midnight, when he’s finally off work. Keep reading for his receipts.

Jump ahead:

The finances
The diet
The expenses
The diary

The finances

What are your pronouns? He/him

What is your occupation? Chef and owner of a restaurant

How old are you? 36

What city and state do you live in? Portland, Maine

What is your annual salary, if you have one? $70,000

How much is one paycheck, after taxes? $2,024

How often are you paid? (e.g. weekly) Biweekly

How much money do you have in savings? $50,000

Rent: $1,500
Utilities (water, gas, electric, oil): $250
Car insurance: $100
Gas for car (approximate): $150
Home toiletries/cleaning products: $100
Cell phone: $110
Subscriptions (Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, magazines): $75
Health insurance: $150
Parking spot: $75
Total: $2,510

The diet

Do you follow a certain diet or have dietary restrictions? No.

What are the grocery staples you always buy, if any? Eggs, black beans, coffee.

How often in a week do you dine out versus cook at home? Two days dining out, 5 days cooking at home, generally, but it depends on the week and season. It might be 3 to 4 in the summer, and 1 to 6 in the winter.

How often in a week did you dine out while growing up? Maybe once a week, but it might have been rarer than that.

How often in a week did your parents or guardians cook at home? Most meals were made at home. Grocery trips were massive and would last our family of four for two weeks.

The expenses

Week’s total: $384.17
Restaurants and cafés total: $253.17
Groceries total: $131
Number of restaurant and café meals: 5
Number of grocery trips: 3, or 6 including grocery runs for restaurant family meals

The diary

Monday

I’m literally blow-torching Muenster cheese.

8 a.m. I wake up. It’s my first morning in four weeks where I don’t have to rush to work. I lie in bed and watch some Instagram Reels like an adult. I see some crossover TikTok content about a “custard” egg sandwich. I run out to Whole Foods to grab supplies to execute these TikTok eggs: 15 eggs, milk, mushroom powder, scallions, ghee, English muffins, Kewpie mayo, Muenster cheese, arugula, and fermented hot sauce. ($69 total)

11 a.m. I’m literally blow-torching Muenster cheese. I cook the eggs over a water bath in the oven for an hour then cut them into squares. I place the egg square on an English muffin with fermented hot sauce and arugula. Pretty typical maniac day-off-from-work behavior.

6 p.m. It’s a rainy evening and I stroll with my wife to a local ramen joint, Pai Men Miyake. I have the urge to eat ramen because of the weather. I get the paitan ramen with spicy garlic paste and some fried brussels sprouts. It was ehh. The noodles are hammered (overcooked) and the broth lacks depth of flavor. Brussels sprouts also need more sodium and fish sauce. It will be a while before I go back. ($35.50 total for two)

7 p.m. Walking back home, I stop in the village of Rosemont to grab a pint of Crunchy Pumpkin ice cream made by Dear Dairy, a locally based ice cream spot. Very good. Hard hits of pumpkin and caramel. Ice cream is my wife’s favorite dessert and always puts a smile on her face. Ice cream is definitely a two times a week thing. ($10 total for two)

Monday total: $114.50

Tuesday

Sous chef has some ground chicken leftover from making larb a few days prior, and we use it to make spicy chicken meatballs.

9 a.m. TikTok egg sandwich round two, this time with avocado and fermented hot sauce on an English muffin. I think I need to explain here that the eggs I made yesterday yielded nine egg squares, which means I’ve meal prepped this week’s morning meals for my wife and myself. I don’t typically meal prep, but I made a lot of these eggs and I can’t very well explain to my partner, “I just wanted that particular egg sandwich yesterday and spent money making it.” I throw everything in the oven. Done. Tastes the same as it did the first time, lovely.

3:30 p.m. I’m at the restaurant and we’re doing family meal or staff meal, whatever you want to call it. It’s brought to you by Whole Foods. We buy and make rigatoni with whole roasted tomatoes, spinach, and Calabrian chili. It takes my cooks and me about 30 minutes to put together. Sous chef has some ground chicken leftover from making larb a few days prior, and we use it to make spicy chicken meatballs. Solid meal for ten people. ($30 total cost for the restaurant, $0 for my staff of 10 and me)

11:00 p.m. I typically get home on weekdays late, so generally my partner and I eat around this time. My wife is a pescatarian so we typically eat vegetarian most nights of the week. She makes dinner: black futsu squash (it’s a cool-looking gourd, one of my favorite farmer’s grows), soup with sweet potato, gem salad with sesame vin and sunflower seeds, burrata and sesame loaf. We bought all of this at the farmers market last Saturday. ($45, previously bought)

Tuesday total: $0

Wednesday

We always have a fair amount of sake on hand, so we make sake miso mussels with grilled baguette. It’s an easy family meal that takes us about 30 minutes to put together.

8 a.m. You guessed it, we’re making TikTok eggs again! This time with daikon and carrot salad with sesame dressing and no English muffin. I’m over it at this point. It will be months before I attempt this recipe again. It’s fine, it’s healthy, and it’s food.

4 p.m. Family meal at the restaurant. We order mussels from Browne Trading Company, which sources Bangs Island Mussels. It’s easily one of Maine’s best mussel farms—the mussels are pulled out of the Casco Bay not five minutes from the restaurant. Unfortunately there’s an investigation into a red tide, or a harmful algal bloom. It happens from time to time. So they send us Prince Edward Island mussels from Canada, still a good mussel. We always have a fair amount of sake on hand, so we make sake miso mussels with grilled baguette. It’s an easy family meal that takes us about 30 minutes to put together. ($36 total cost for the restaurant, $0 for my staff and me)

11:30 p.m. Home for dinner. My partner makes fried tofu with sautéed bok choy and white rice and young ginger from groceries she bought today at Whole Foods and the co-op. ($40 total) Very clean flavors, feels super healthy. Super easy meal because all I have to do is wash the dishes.

Wednesday total: $40

Thursday

I’m being a bit over the top, poaching the chorizo in pork dashi then grilling them and cooking the black beans in the chorizo poaching liquid, blah blah chef stuff.

10 a.m. I’m in my car eating Whole Foods sushi (on Thursdays, it’s half off): shrimp with puffed rice and an avocado roll. We’re understaffed today at the restaurant, so everything is going to be in spirit of that. The sushi tastes like raw fish and cold rice, not a lot of nuanced flavor. It’s just something to keep me upright and focused. Sushi on the go with NPR in the background usually happens twice a week. ($22 total)

4 p.m. Family meal: black bean soup with chorizo, cotija, cilantro, and tortilla chips. Bought these supplies at La Bodega Latina, a local Latin market owned by this wild character who also owns a small Latin bar/restaurant/club. He’s a regular at the restaurant, so I like to drop in once a week to say what’s up. It’s also the only place in town where I can find corn husks and aji amarillo. Family meal takes me over an hour today. I’m being a bit over the top, poaching the chorizo in pork dashi then grilling them and cooking the black beans in the chorizo poaching liquid, blah blah chef stuff. It’s good. Big Mexican comfort vibes. ($55 total cost for the restaurant, $0 for my staff and me)

12 a.m. Late night. My sous chef asked to go home early, so I stayed and broke down (cleaned up) with my team. Back home, my wife once again makes dinner for us both: marinated salmon with pickled cucumbers, sushi rice, and Kewpie mayo. We recently got an air fryer so it makes salmon super quick and easy. The whole thing is delicious. The price I pay: dishes and taking out the recycling.

Thursday total: $22

Friday

It’s leftover day. We use chorizo from the previous family meal to make hoagies with baguettes, Calabrian mayo, sliced tomatoes, and iceberg lettuce from a local farmer.

9:30 a.m. I pick up bagels from Rose Foods, a bagel spot in town. The pumpernickel bagel with olive cream cheese is absolutely fire, salty and crunchy. I buy a bag of six bagels and two sides of cream cheese for future snacks. ($14.50 for six bagels, $11.50 for the sides of cream cheese)

4 p.m. Family meal at the restaurant. It’s leftover day. We use chorizo from the previous family meal to make hoagies with baguettes, Calabrian mayo, sliced tomatoes, and iceberg lettuce from a local farmer. Nothing purchased today for this easy, 15-minute family meal. It’s simple and keeps myself and all the staff fed. Spicy tho.

No dinner time p.m. Dinner: nah. Dishwasher called off again. Had to cut the sous chef for being inappropriate. I drink seltzer water then go to bed.

Friday total: $26

Saturday

We skipped family meal at the restaurant today, which is typical when we’re busy and understaffed.

11 a.m. I’m at work and my business partner and general manager brings me a coffee and gives me a handful of roasted pistachios. Not really a typical meal, but it will have to do because it is Saturday and we have a lot of work to do. Costs me nothing, but it was also nothing.

11 p.m. We skipped family meal at the restaurant today, which is typical when we’re busy and understaffed. For dinner, my wife orders food from a Thai restaurant called Boda and we eat at home. She’s flying out to Denver for work, so we’re keeping it simple. Fried rice, woon-sen pad thai, sticky rice balls, and papaya salad. It tastes a bit greasy, but I don’t have to cook so that’s amazing. ($95 total for two, including tip and tax)

Saturday total: $95

Sunday

It’s tasty and brings me back to life. It would be 6/10 on a normal day, but it’s a 10/10 on a rainy Sunday in October in Maine.

9 a.m. No work today. I eat a two-day-old bagel with two-day-old cream cheese. Tastes the same as before, just more stale. I choose this because it’s easy and available. Quick three minutes in the oven on broil. Done.

8 p.m. I’m home alone, so I order Chinese from Pom’s, something my wife can’t really eat but she’s out of town. I eat veggie spring rolls, General Tso’s chicken, egg fried rice, and tempura fried cauliflower with coconut. It’s tasty and brings me back to life. It would be 6/10 on a normal day, but it’s a 10/10 on a rainy Sunday in October in Maine. ($86.67 total, including tip and tax)