The 10 Best Cheap Eats in San Diego, Ranked

El Pueblo Mexican Food in Cardiff sells a fish taco for $1.39, and it will sell you one at noon, at dinner or at 3 a.m. The shop sits inside a gas-station market on Birmingham Drive and is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That combination of a well-made taco, a tiny price and a door that never closes makes it the best cheap eat in San Diego, and the most useful one.

The taco keeps things simple. A piece of fish is battered and fried to order until it's crispy, then laid on a corn tortilla with cabbage, pico and chipotle sauce. El Pueblo's own line about it is short and confident: "Order one. Order ten. There is no limit." Four makes a real meal, and four comes to $5.56 before tax. The salsa bar is included, so taco number two can head somewhere different from taco number one.

What keeps people coming back is how steady it all is. The fish taco comes out fast and the same way whether it's the lunch rush or long after the bars close, and the praise tends to circle the same few things: crispy fish, the salsa bar, the speed and a price that barely seems real. Every other entry on this list gets measured against it. Plenty of places make a fancier taco. Nobody on this list feeds you this well, this fast, for this little, at any hour.

El Pueblo has been family-owned since 2010 and has grown to five locations, with shops in Carlsbad, Carmel Valley, Del Mar and, most recently, La Jolla. The Cardiff-by-the-Sea shop is the one this ranking is about, and the one to put in your map app, since each location runs its own kitchen on its own hours. If someone in your group wants more than tacos, the menu keeps going with breakfast burritos, carne asada, chilaquiles and huevos rancheros.

If El Pueblo is the cheapest great bite on this list, K Sandwiches is the fastest full lunch. This Linda Vista Road shop bakes its own baguettes, and the order is the K's Special, listed on the menu as K Dac Biet: a Vietnamese bánh mì filled with a mix of cold-cut hams and pâté for $8.59.

Every bánh mì here gets dressed the same way, with house pickles, cilantro, jalapeños and house mayo. Put that on a crackly baguette baked on site and you have the reason this shop is on the list. Fans bring up the bread first, then how well-filled the sandwiches are, then how quickly the line moves. It's a sandwich that eats like a meal.

Cold cuts are only the beginning. The No. 9 grilled pork costs the same as the K's Special, the No. 8 vegetarian swaps in crispy root vegetables with a sweet-tangy sauce and no mayo, and the pork combo stacks grilled pork, shredded pork skin and a grilled pork patty for $11.99. There's a pastry case by the register, croissant sandwiches for anyone who wants flaky over crusty, and a drink list that runs from the house milk coffee made with condensed milk to smoothies in durian, avocado and jackfruit.

K Sandwiches is built for grab-and-go. It opens at 7:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 on Sunday, so it covers breakfast as easily as lunch. The lot fills up at peak and the counter slows when it's busy, which makes an early or mid-afternoon stop the easy play. Prices on delivery apps don't always match the shop's own, so go by the total at the register.

Teri Cafe has been feeding Oceanside for more than 38 years, and the dish that explains the staying power is the chicken teriyaki bowl: chicken teriyaki over steamed rice with vegetables, $11, every day of the week. This entry is the Plaza Drive shop, Teri Cafe - Oceanside II, one of two Teri Cafe locations in town.

The portions are the headline. Depending on your appetite, that bowl covers a meal and a half, sometimes two, so an $11 lunch can quietly take care of dinner too. Teri Cafe's own slogan promises healthy portions of good food at a great price, and reviewers back up the portion part especially: generous bowls, the same size every visit, and quick service at the counter.

The menu reaches well past teriyaki. There's katsu don, shrimp and vegetable tempura, udon and soba, sushi rolls, and ramen in shoyu, miso and tonkotsu, all on broths made from chicken and pork stock. The shop describes the whole operation as a family environment with a touch of Hawaiian flair. Want the full plate treatment? The chicken teriyaki plate adds green salad and potato salad for $14.

Lunch gets busy, roughly 11:30 to 1, so an early or late lunch keeps things moving if you're on a break. The weekday lunch specials rotate, from chicken teriyaki with fried rice on Mondays to mini chicken teriyaki with California rolls on Thursdays. For anyone in North County who needs a dependable, generous meal on a budget, this is the one to keep in your back pocket.

Al Umaraa Restaurant & Market in El Cajon is two businesses sharing one room: a family-owned Iraqi and Mediterranean kitchen and a Middle Eastern grocery. The order is the beef shawarma plate, $9.99 with your choice of rice and salad, and it's the strongest under-$10 plate on this list.

The rest of the menu reads like a family's greatest hits. Grilled kababs, chicken tikka, stuffed chicken, falafel, a beef cream chop plate and, for bigger gatherings, whole pots of meat or vegetable dolma. Garlic sauce and tahini sauce show up across the board. Diners describe the food as fresh, the plates as generous and the service as warm. Several everyday plates sit at $9.99, and the beef shawarma sandwich is $7.99 if you want to keep it lighter.

Then there's the market. Order at the counter first, then give the shelves some time: fresh produce and herbs, Middle Eastern spices, specialty pantry goods, imported drinks, traditional sweets and prepared foods to take home. It's easy for lunch to turn into a grocery run, and that's half the fun. The business says there's plenty of parking.

If Teri Cafe is the North County value to know, Al Umaraa is East County's, with a bag of groceries on the way out.

Wavy Burgers is a burger counter inside Friends of Friends, a coffee shop on East 8th Street in National City. There's no separate Wavy storefront to look for. Walk into the coffee shop, find the burger counter and order the OG double: two Wagyu-blend patties, caramelized onion and sauce on a soft bun, for $11.

The burger earns its spot on how well it's put together. Fans point to patties with crisp edges, the caramelized onion and a soft bun that pulls everything into one tidy bite. Friendly service comes up a lot, and so does the value. It's a carefully built burger with a small scavenger hunt attached.

Timing is the thing to get right. The burger counter keeps its own hours, separate from the coffee shop's. Monday through Thursday it wraps up at about 4:45 in the afternoon, well before Friends of Friends closes for the day. Friday through Sunday it runs into the evening, until about 7:45. So a weekday Wavy burger is a lunch plan, and a weekend one can be dinner.

Wavy ranks fifth because it pairs one of the most unusual setups on this list with a burger worth the detour. Along with El Pueblo in its gas-station market, it's one of two picks here tucked inside another business. Coffee and a double burger at the same stop make for a very good National City afternoon.

TJ Tacos in Escondido is built around the trompo, the vertical rotisserie where the adobada pork turns until it's carved off for your tacos. Three adobada tacos at the counter come to $11.97, $3.99 apiece, and that's dinner on East Valley Parkway.

The praise lands on the right things: adobada cut straight from the trompo, fresh tortillas, strong salsas and a counter that moves quickly. The salsa bar lets each taco go its own way, so the second and third don't taste like repeats of the first. Three tacos, three different salsas, one very happy drive home.

Two habits keep this a bargain. Order at the counter, since delivery apps charge a good deal more for the same tacos, and stick with the three-taco order, because bigger orders and burritos climb in price. If El Pueblo is the coastal taco that never closes, TJ Tacos is the inland one that stays up late. It runs late every day, with weekend service reaching midnight, so it's the North County move when the craving shows up after the dinner rush. Late hours can shift, so check the day's schedule before you drive inland.

Phở Duyên Mai has pho in its name and a broth people rave about, but for this list, start with the sandwich. The grilled-pork bánh mì at this Kearny Villa Road shop in Kearny Mesa is $8.95, and diners describe it as unusually substantial for the price. Grilled chicken, pork cha-siu and a veggie version sit at the same price, and if you can't decide between soup and sandwich, there's a pho dip bánh mì for $13.50.

Where K Sandwiches builds its whole shop around the baguette, Phở Duyên Mai gives you a great sandwich today and a reason to come back tomorrow. That reason is the pho. The broth gets the most love, described as clean and complex, and the No. 23 House Special loads the bowl with rare steak, well-done steak, brisket, flank, tendon and tripe. Pho to go comes in the large size only, so plan on plenty.

The staff are known for taking allergies seriously, so mention yours before you order and ask what the kitchen can do. Parking in the Kearny Villa shopping complex gets tight at lunch, so leave a few extra minutes. When you search for directions, put in the Kearny Villa Road address itself, since older references can point you to Convoy Street instead. The kitchen is open every day from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Super Cocina on University Avenue in City Heights has been cooking Mexican home food since 1988, and its full name says so: Super Cocina, Comida Casera Mexicana. The menu changes every day, rotating through more than 180 dishes from different regions of Mexico, so the lineup depends on when you walk in.

Mole, cochinita pibil, chile colorado and birria are regulars in that rotation. The San Diego Reader's Naomi Wise once wrote that instead of "city-slicker chef creations," diners get "simple, spicy country food," anchored by the stews that are staples of Mexican home cooking, and that's still a good way to picture what lands on your plate.

You don't have to guess, either. Super Cocina offers free tastes of the day's dishes, so ask to try the mole before you commit to a one-guisado plate. Plates are served cafeteria-style with rice, beans and homemade corn tortillas, and those tortillas get their own share of praise. The plate runs $14 to $14.50, near the top of this list's range, and it's a full, generous plate of real home cooking.

Go earlier in the day for the widest choice, since dishes thin out later, and expect the line to slow at peak. For the best cheap Mexican food on this list, this is the stop, and lunch might introduce you to a dish you've never had.

Garden Fresh Grill & Smoothie is a family-owned Mediterranean counter on El Cajon Boulevard in Rolando that has been serving San Diego for more than a decade. The cheap-eats order is the grilled chicken breast bowl: chicken over rice with garlic sauce and your pick from the appetizer list, for $14.50.

This is the practical bowl, not the dramatic one. It's hot, filling and dependable, and reviewers point to fresh grilled proteins, big rice-and-salad portions and friendly service. The family behind it says its crew works fast, and that speed makes it an easy lunch-break stop. The same $14.50 gets you a gyro bowl with tzatziki or a falafel bowl with tahini.

If a sandwich sounds better, the gyro is the other classic: a lamb-and-beef blend carved off a spinner and tucked into Greek pita with lettuce, parsley, tomato, onion and tzatziki, $12.95 on the restaurant's menu. The smoothie half of the name gets plenty of love too, so plan on a drink.

Garden Fresh keeps a longer day than most counters here, open until 10 p.m. daily. That makes it the Rolando pick when dinner happens late and the breakfast-and-lunch spots have already closed. Grab a bowl, grab a smoothie, and you're set for the night.

Katsu Cafe in Clairemont Mesa is the leftovers champion of this list. The chicken yakisoba, a plate of stir-fried noodles for $12.50, is portioned so generously that one order easily turns into two meals. If Teri Cafe is North County's big-portion play, Katsu Cafe is the city's.

The menu is billed as teriyaki, ramen and sushi, and it covers all three and then some: crispy tonkatsu, chicken teriyaki, sushi rolls made to order, udon and soba, fried rice, and ramen in shoyu, tonkotsu or miso broth with chashu pork, vegetables and egg for $12.95. With that much range, ordering can take a minute even after the budget is settled.

The best way to eat here is with a partner. Order the yakisoba and a bowl of ramen for the table, split both, and take the rest home. Diners talk about very large portions and plenty left over, and the chicken fried rice at $11.95 and vegetable yakisoba at $11.50 keep the bill friendly for whoever's paying.

Weeknights are the smooth play. Weekend dinners get busy and service can slow down, so if you're working to a clock, go Monday through Thursday or call in a pickup order ahead of time.