Where to eat in Sofia on a budget: local food, prices and a menu decoder

A sit-down lunch in central Sofia costs about EUR 10 to 12 a person on the menus I read on 13 November 2026. Soup, main and bread came to EUR 10.30 at Divaka and EUR 11.89 at Hadjidraganov's Houses. All prices are from the restaurants' own pages; I did not eat there.

Key facts

• Prices are in euro. Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026 at a fixed EUR 1 = BGN 1.95583. Some menus still show leva beside the euro.
• Cheapest full lunch I could add up: EUR 10.30 at Divaka (soup EUR 2.99, main EUR 6.80, bread EUR 0.51), dated Friday 13 November 2026.
• A shopska salad cost EUR 6.99 to EUR 9.80 across the four menus.
• A day for two, lunch plus a shared dinner, came to EUR 48.81 or EUR 55.90 in the two models below. Drinks, coffee and tip are not in it.
• A cola was EUR 2.19 at Divaka and at Happy, and an espresso EUR 2.19 at Happy.

The four places at a glance

I price a place only when I can read its menu on its own website. These four had euro prices I could read on 13 November 2026. This is not a ranking. It is what the menus said.

The cheap end of Sofia eating also includes bakeries (banitsa, a filled pastry), mekitsa (fried dough) and soup bars. SofiaGoTravel sends readers to those. I found no bakery or soup bar whose own website showed a price, so I quote none.

Divaka: the daily lunch menu

Divaka is a tavern chain that says its first place opened in 1995. Its lunch menu page links one page per central branch, and each page dates its menu. The pages are in Bulgarian only.

On Friday 13 November 2026 the Hristo Belchev 16 page listed:

The William Gladstone 54 page had a different menu that day. It listed a cream soup at EUR 2.99 and three mains at EUR 6.80 each: an omelette with two cheeses, "lazy" sarmi with sauerkraut, and roast pork knuckle with potato. A chicken salad was EUR 3.99. The 6th Septemvri page was dated the same day but listed no dishes. The pages state no lunch hours. The site header shows 11:00 to 22:00 without saying whether that means the restaurants or delivery.

The Hristo Belchev branch is about 0.56 km and the Gladstone branch about 0.78 km from Serdika metro station. Those are straight lines between OpenStreetMap coordinates, so real walks are longer. Serdika is the centre the where-to-stay guide uses.

Divaka's online menu

For dinner I used the chain's online menu, read the same day. It is the menu of its delivery and pickup shop. The shop's terms cover delivery and pickup only, and Divaka publishes no separate dine-in menu, so I cannot say whether the table prices match these.

On the drinks page a 0.33 l can of cola is EUR 2.19 and a 0.5 l can of Zagorka beer EUR 2.50. No coffee is listed.

Hadjidraganov's Houses: folk tavern with a lunch menu

Hadjidraganov's Houses serves traditional Bulgarian food in four restored houses from 1866 around one courtyard. It is at Kozloduy St. 75, near Maria Luiza Boulevard, and its own page puts Lion's Bridge 4 minutes away. It opens every day from 11:30 to 23:30, with live folk music from 20:00 to 23:00 every day except Tuesday.

Its lunch menu page was a little messy when I read it on 13 November. The newest block was dated Monday 9 November 2026, and older blocks, some dated January 2026, sat below it. Check the date at the top before you go. The 9 November block listed:

• cream of bean and lentil soup EUR 3.70, chicken soup with spinach EUR 4.00
• homemade sudzhuk sausage cooked on charcoal, with baked beans and potatoes, EUR 6.20
• mish-mash EUR 5.40
• pan-fried rice with vegetables EUR 3.80

The cheapest soup, the sudzhuk and a EUR 1.99 homemade bread from the main menu add up to EUR 11.89.

Dinner prices from the same menu: shopska salad (350 g) EUR 7.62, boiled beans with sausage in a copper pot EUR 8.90, kavarma (a clay-pot pork stew) EUR 14.80.

Shtastliveca: Vitosha Boulevard prices

Shtastliveca publishes a menu file per restaurant. The one for bul. Vitosha 27 is a PDF file created on 24 September 2026 (the menu itself prints no date), in Bulgarian, with euro prices:

• "authentic" shopska salad (380 g) EUR 9.80
• kebapcheta with fries and lyutenitsa (350 g) EUR 12.00
• mish-mash in a pot (350 g) EUR 11.90
• kavarma for two with flatbread (650 g) EUR 34.80
• rustic flatbread EUR 2.90, a 0.5 l draught Shumensko beer EUR 3.20, a double espresso EUR 2.60

For the dishes I could compare, it is the dearest of the four. The menu has a section of vegetarian and vegan dishes. The pages I read give no opening hours.

Happy Bar and Grill: the chain with English on the menu

Happy is a restaurant chain with branches across Bulgaria. Its main menu is a set of autumn 2026 menu pages in Bulgarian and English, and it states that all prices are in euro and include VAT:

• shopska salad (460 g) EUR 6.99, marked vegetarian
• chicken steak with porcini sauce and potatoes (410 g) EUR 9.29
• "Happy bread" with herb butter and feta EUR 2.39
• espresso EUR 2.19, cappuccino EUR 2.89, a 330 ml can of cola EUR 2.19

The central branches are Happy Rakovski at G.S. Rakovski 45, open every day 11:00 to 23:00, and Happy St. Nedelya. That page shows two sets of hours. The top says 11:00 to 23:00 every day. Further down it says 11:00 to 22:00 from Sunday to Thursday and to 22:30 on Friday and Saturday. Plan on the earlier closing.

One dish, four menus: shopska salad

The same salad, read on the same day, shows how far prices spread.

A worked day for two

A model, not a bill. Two people, food only, lunch at Divaka on the 13 November menu.

That is about EUR 24.40 or EUR 27.95 a person. Left out: breakfast (I found no priced bakery page), drinks, coffee, tip and the metro. Two colas add EUR 4.38. Dinner A assumes four dishes shared by two people and no bread.

How to pick a place when you cannot read the menu

Star ratings tell you little about the bill. I use four checks instead.

1. Is the lunch menu posted with a date? A dated list is a daily menu, not a standing price. Divaka's and Hadjidraganov's both carry dates.
2. Are the prices in euro? Older leva-only prices predate the euro (1 January 2026). If a page shows both, the euro price rules. Moma, on Solunska 28, still showed only leva on its website menu on 13 November, so I left it out.
3. Is bread a separate line? It is on all four menus. Divaka's lunch roll is EUR 0.51, and its 200 g village loaf on the online menu is EUR 3.37. Bread you did not ask for may still be billed, so ask.
4. Does the menu list drinks? Divaka's has no coffee; Happy's and Shtastliveca's do.

None of the menus I read gave full allergen details. Shtastliveca prints number codes beside its dishes, but I found no key to them in the file. Ask before you order.

Reading the menu: a Cyrillic cheat sheet

Divaka's pages and Shtastliveca's menu are in Bulgarian only. Each word below is printed on one of the menus above, and I checked each meaning in a Bulgarian dictionary.

Tipping and cards

There is no official rule I could find, so this is custom, not law. SofiaGoTravel says rounding up or leaving 5 to 10 per cent is normal at sit-down places, and that most places take cards but market stalls do not. Chasing the Donkey advises a cash tip, because adding one to a card payment is not usually possible. It also says to check whether a service charge is already on the bill. Its examples are in leva, so read them with the euro rate above.

Where I could not price a meal

Made in Home and Mekitsa and Coffee come up in many guides, but I found no official website with a menu for either. I found no official page for the Central Market Hall either. Rather than repeat other people's prices, I left them out.

Fitting food into a day

The things to do planner ends its free tour at about 13:00, which is lunch-menu time. Its evening walk is Vitosha Boulevard, where Shtastliveca sits. For the ride back, a public transport ride is EUR 0.80, and tapping the same bank card for three or more rides caps the day at EUR 2.00.

Which one, then? Divaka if you want the cheapest dated lunch. Hadjidraganov's Houses if you want a lunch menu by day and folk music by night. Happy if you want an English menu and a salad marked vegetarian. Shtastliveca if you are already on Vitosha Boulevard and accept paying the most of the four.

On a tight budget, make lunch the big meal and keep dinner to shared plates. Before you go, open the restaurant's own page and read that day's lunch menu. It costs nothing.