Cheap eats in Dubrovnik under €9

The bakery breakfast

Every pekara (bakery) does the same 3 essentials for under €4. Burek (flaky pastry with cheese, meat, or spinach) is €3. Sirnica is a coiled cheese pastry, €3. A slice of pizza is €3-€3. Mlinar and Klas are the main chains; independents like Vukičević near Gruž market are better. Add a coffee at a stand-up bar for €2 and breakfast is €5. Do this instead of the €16 hotel buffet. Bakeries open around 6am and the best trays sell out by 9am, so aim early if you want a still-warm burek instead of a reheated one from the back shelf.

The Mlinar branch just outside Pile Gate is the most convenient for anyone staying in the Old Town, but it is also the busiest, with a queue out the door by 8:30 in high season. Klas near the bus station is quieter and stays open later, useful if you are catching an early Libertas bus and need something to eat on the way. If you are staying in Lapad or near Gruž harbour, skip the chains entirely and use the small bakery counters inside the Gruž covered market, where the pastry is made on site and a coffee to go rarely tops €1.50.

Sandwich shops and takeaway

Barba on Boškovićeva in the Old Town does a tuna burger for €8 and octopus burger for €10 — proper sit-down quality at takeaway prices. Presa on Kovačka does pressed sandwiches with pršut and cheese for €6. Buffet Kamenice on Gundulić square (yes, in the middle of the tourist zone) does a plate of small fried fish for €8 that no one seems to have told the guidebooks about. Tabasco Pizza near the bus station does massive slices for €3. All of these are walkable from Stradun in under 10 minutes, which matters more than it sounds once the August heat sets in.

Barba has no seating beyond a few standing counters, so treat it as a stop on the way somewhere rather than a sit-down meal — that is exactly why it can charge €8 for octopus instead of €22. Presa is better for a beach picnic; buy the sandwich, grab a bottle of water from a nearby Studenac, and eat it on the rocks below Buža bar instead of paying Buža's drink prices for the view. Kamenice is the one genuine surprise on this list: a tourist-square address with a locals' price, and it is worth booking nothing and simply turning up before 1pm before the lunch rush fills the handful of tables.

Where locals actually eat lunch

Konoba Ribar on Kneza Damjana Jude in the Old Town does a €9 daily lunch (marenda) — usually stewed meat, potatoes, and salad. It's the kind of thing the city hall workers eat. Same principle at Taj Mahal on Nikole Gučetića (Bosnian, not Indian — cevapi platter €8). If you’re near Gruž, Buffet Škola does the workers' lunch for €7. All 3 are 30% of the Stradun price and 200% of the flavour. None of them have an English menu on the door, which is usually the best sign you are in the right place.

Marenda is served on a fixed clock, roughly 11:30am to 1:30pm, because it is built around the working day rather than the tourist one — turn up at 3pm expecting the €9 plate and you will get the full evening menu instead, at full evening prices. Konoba Ribar is the pick if you want fish rather than meat; ask what came in that morning rather than ordering off the printed list. Taj Mahal is the better choice for a big appetite, since the cevapi platter comes with bread and ajvar and easily covers a whole afternoon of walking the Old Town walls.

Markets for self-caterers

Gundulićeva poljana, the morning market just below the Jesuit Stairs in the Old Town, runs daily until early afternoon and sells fruit, tomatoes, figs, and local cheese by the kilo rather than by the tourist portion. A kilo of peaches runs around €3-4 depending on the month; a wedge of hard sheep's cheese is closer to €10-12 a kilo but a small piece for a picnic costs a couple of euros. Prices creep up toward August and drop again once the cruise ships thin out in October, so shopping here in shoulder season stretches a food budget noticeably further than in peak summer.

The bigger, cheaper option is the covered Gruž market (Tržnica Gruž) near the ferry port, a 15-minute walk or a €1.50 bus ride from Pile Gate on lines 1a, 1b, or 3. It has the same produce as Gundulićeva poljana at lower prices because it serves residents rather than cruise passengers, plus a fish counter worth checking early — by 10am the best of the morning catch is often gone. Pick up bread from an adjoining pekara, a chunk of cheese, and some fruit, and a full picnic for two comes in well under €10.

Supermarkets and grocery basics

Konzum and Tommy are the two supermarket chains you will see everywhere, from the Old Town's edges to Lapad and Gruž, and both are useful for stocking an apartment kitchen rather than for a sit-down meal. A liter of milk, a loaf of bread, and a block of local cheese from either chain comes to around €6-7 total, cheaper than a single bakery breakfast if you are self-catering for more than a day or two. Studenac is the smaller convenience chain, more expensive but open later and more likely to have a branch within a two-minute walk of wherever you are staying.

None of the supermarket branches inside the Old Town walls are large — space is tight and rents are high — so the better-stocked stores are just outside Pile Gate or Ploče Gate, and the largest of all is the Tommy near the Gruž bus terminal. If you are staying in an apartment with a kitchenette anywhere in Lapad, buying a few days of breakfast supplies there on arrival and skipping the bakery run altogether is the single easiest way to shave euros off a daily food budget without giving anything up.

Where to skip and why

Stradun itself, the main limestone thoroughfare through the Old Town, is almost entirely restaurants charging tourist-menu prices for average food — a €26 pizza there is not an exaggeration, and the view of the street is the only thing you are really paying for. Prijeko, the narrow parallel street one block up, is worse: a solid run of restaurants with staff standing in the doorway trying to wave people in, which is rarely a sign of a kitchen that needs no help selling itself. Both streets are worth walking through for the architecture, not for dinner.

The same applies to most restaurants directly facing Gundulić square's fountains or backing onto the harbour view near the Old Port — the rent for that view is folded into every dish. If a table is priced in a way that only makes sense with a sea view attached, walk two streets back; Kneza Damjana Jude, Kovačka, and Boškovićeva all sit within a few minutes of the same view without the surcharge. The honest rule for Dubrovnik's Old Town: the better the terrace, the worse the value, almost without exception.