Is your food truck really using organic meat? The US has a very interesting food truck and street food culture. You get chefs who are saving money on rent, but the food ends up costing as much as a brick and mortar quick service restaurant. (~$15 in NYC these days, creeping up with inflation.)

There's some genuine cheap food targeting service and construction workers - dollar pizza, rice and meat places, Chinatown - but you also get, for example, somebody who went to Berlin, saw döner kebabs, and now are charging $15 to make them here...

I'm sympathetic to the issues of cooking for 1, but I'm skeptical that it's really cheaper to eat out and get the same quality and healthfulness that you could get from cooking.

"Insist on buying organic" is a big qualifier. That food truck isn't cooking organic.

I purchase meat in Chinatown on the regular for remarkably good prices.

There is also a great appreciation for people who cook at restaurant / food truck etc. I have cooked very decent meals for family and friends, putting great deal of effort, attention and love and all people could say was "yeah, not bad". Same people will go to restaurant eat a rather bad meal for good money but show deep respect to restaurant.

Yeah, if you’re buying wagyu, sashimi-grade fish, and heirloom vegetables, it will be more expensive per meal than a Halal Guys truck.

I guarantee that it will be cheaper to cook a meal equivalent to what you get from a food truck yourself. I live in a area whose cost of living is on par with NYC, and have never seen a grocery bill to the contrary.

> Additionally, unless you meal plan very well, some of your ingredients are going to go bad; you can’t really purchase enough celery for just one meal.

Egg salad uses abundant amounts of celery and can last several days in the fridge. Stews and soups also use lots of celery and both freeze/defrost very well.

In my experience, the hardest thing to meal plan around is fresh aromatic herbs. Hard to figure out how to use a giant bunch of fresh tarragon or mint without getting sick of it.