Miami is the most expensive city in the country for dining out, study says
You might think the most expensive cities for dining out in the U.S. are obvious.
New York. Los Angeles. Washington D.C. Maybe San Francisco or Seattle? Perhaps Chicago?
But no. According to a global study by an international food magazine, Miami is the most expensive city in the country for dining out.
We know quite a few of you are nodding smugly, unsurprised, and possibly still cringing from the sting of your last credit card statement. When we asked Miami residents why they weren’t going out to eat this summer, the overwhelming response was that the prices were too high. One succinct responder simply wrote “Broke broke broke broke broke.”
Read more: More than half of Miamians can barely make ends meet, new report finds
An analysis by Chef’s Pencil seems to support this theory. The magazine recently analyzed 177 cities around the world to find the most affordable places to eat out, and Miami ranked no. 77, the least affordable spot in the country, comparable to European cities like Copenhagen, Madrid and Vienna. New York, by comparison, ranked no. 62 on the affordability scale.
To come to this conclusion, the study used data from Numbeo, a crowdsourced database that tracks cost of living and wage data. Chef’s Pencil itself admits that Numbeo’s process is not “as rigorous as official government statistics,” but states that it’s a useful way to spot global trends.
And Miami is trending expensive, which you know if you’ve made a reservation in the past year.
The study focused on what it calls mid-range restaurants as the best barometers of dining costs, comparing the cost of a three-course meal with the average monthly net wage in each city. In Miami, such a meal costs about $60 per person, which Numbeo reports represents 1.4 percent of the average monthly salary ($4,230).
By contrast, in Dallas, the city ranked most affordable in the world, the cost per person is about $35 and the average monthly salary is $4,687. Other U.S. cities in the top 10 most affordable include Denver (no. 4) and Houston (no. 10). The rest of the top 10 is rounded out by Muscat, Oman; Bern, Switzerland (where the average monthly salary is $7,645); Osaka, Japan; Singapore; Tokyo; Shenzhen, China; and Seoul, Korea.
Miami fared better in the category of coffee affordability, ranking no. 56 in the world, thanks no doubt to the ventanitas that power the city with sugar and caffeine. Miami also ranked 45 worldwide in the cost of beer, with the average pint costing around $8 per pint.
But cheer up. At least Miami is still reasonably inexpensive compared to the top five most expensive cities: Lagos, Nigeria; Caracas, Venezuela; Georgetown, Guyana; Cairo, Egypt; and Beirut, Lebanon.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 4:30 AM.