Best Cheap Eats in Santa Monica Two People, Under $20
🎡 Santa Monica, CA · 24 verified deals · Updated August 27, 2026
Santa Monica eats better than almost any city its size in America. The Wednesday farmers market on Arizona Avenue is the one Los Angeles chefs actually shop, and the town built around it lives up to the address — Rustic Canyon cooking straight off those stalls, Mélisse running one of the most serious tasting menus in the state, Father's Office pouring the burger that launched a thousand gastropub imitations, Bay Cities stacking Godmothers since 1925, SUGARFISH and KazuNori at the sushi counters, a Tijuana adobada spit on Colorado, and enough ocean-view rooms to fill a week of dinners. It is a genuine food city, and it is priced like one — which is exactly why the cheap end is worth mapping properly. Below: every spot we could confirm where two people eat for under $20 — a $9.00 cheeseburger window on Montana, four breakfast tacos for $16 off Wilshire, a pizza run that turned out to be the best value in town — a whole 12-inch Margherita for $18.95 on Wilshire, two Joe's slices for $9.50 — the taquerias, where five street tacos on Broadway come to $17.50, and two burger counters — $15.00 for two on the Pier, $18.90 for two Wagyu Classics off the Promenade. Then the near misses, with the cheapest two-person build on each menu and what it actually costs — in this city the gap between $19 and $25 is most of the decision. Every price came from a menu the business controls, never a delivery app.
💡 How to eat cheap here: in Santa Monica this is mostly a geography problem. Downtown, Montana Avenue and the Main Street stretch are where the money eats; the value runs inland along Lincoln, Pico and Santa Monica Boulevard, plus a couple of walk-up windows that never got the memo about what this zip code charges. The two best moves are a shared pizza and à-la-carte tacos: a whole pie splits two ways for less than most single entrées here cost, six pizzerias clear the line that way, and five taco counters do it on tacos ordered one at a time. One warning — Santa Monica's taco-night reputation does not survive checking. Neither Gilbert's El Indio nor La Purépecha lists a Tuesday deal on its own menu, and the discounts in circulation live only on third-party sites. Otherwise: order at a counter, treat the sit-down rooms as a lunch play rather than dinner, and read the near misses below before you commit — a lot of the obvious picks here land between $21 and $30 for two, which is the whole difference between a cheap meal and a normal one.
🏠 Local Spots That Clear $20 · 15 spots
The independents that hold the line, each priced off its own menu — six pizzerias, five taquerias, three burger counters and a Main Street café. Every price is an owner-menu total, and every name on the list earns its place.
Every price below was read off a source the restaurant controls — its own site or its own ordering page. No delivery-app pricing, no aggregators, no estimates.
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The Win-Dow
Two cheeseburgers · $9.00 for two
Two cheeseburgers at $4.50 each = $9.00, confirmed on the walk-up window's own Toast ordering page. This is the cheapest real meal for two in Santa Monica by a wide margin, and it is a sidewalk window on Montana Avenue — no table, no tip line, no reservation.
Off the Texas taqueria's own menu: Frio ($3.50) + Brazos ($3.50) + Neches ($4.50) + Comal ($4.50) = $16.00, four tacos across two people. Push to a Trinity pair ($5.50 each) plus two Frios and you are still at $18.00. The flour tortillas are pressed in-house and it is a block off the Third Street Promenade.
Two BLTs at $9.00 each = $18.00 at the small Main Street café in Ocean Park — a counter-service breakfast-and-sandwich room on a stretch where most neighbours are charging $16 for avocado toast. Priced from its own menu, not a delivery app.
A whole 12-inch Margherita is $18.95 off the family pizzeria's own menu — the cheapest real sit-down-sized pie in the city, and the clearest two-person meal on this page that isn't a counter. Same price gets the Bianco, the Flying Pig (sausage, roasted red peppers, onions) or the Hawaiian Punch. Serving Wilshire since 1983; sizes run 12" / 16" / 18", and only the 12" clears the line.
The Greenwich Village institution's Santa Monica outpost, a block off the Promenade. A classic NY cheese slice is $4.75, so two is $9.50 — cut from an 18-inch pie, which makes a slice each a genuine lunch. The whole pie is $29.00 and blows the budget, so order by the slice and stand at the counter like you're supposed to.
Roman-style pizza al taglio, sold by the slab. A Margherita Big Slice is $6.50, so two is $13.00 — or take the Half at $12.00, which the menu itself says serves one to two. The Main Street shop is the Santa Monica location of the Highland Park original; the crust is the reason to come.
A whole cheese pizza is $13.95, and the Margherita, White, Hawaiian and Spinach Artichoke are all $16.95 — a dozen pies on this brick-oven menu land under $20 before you split anything. The other reason it matters: SaMo runs to 3am nightly and 4am on Friday and Saturday, which makes it the cheapest late-night meal in the city. One caveat — the shop publishes no pie diameter on any of its menus, so check the size at the counter.
A Create Your Own cheese pizza is $13.99 on the Pico Boulevard shop's own ordering menu — dough made daily with olive oil and hand tossed, per the house. Open to 2am most nights and 3am Wednesday through Saturday, so it splits the late-night job with SaMo a mile up the road. Like SaMo, it doesn't publish a diameter; ask before you order for two.
Street tacos are $3.50 each on the restaurant's own menu, so five across two people is $17.50 — the cheapest proper taco spread in Santa Monica. Taconazos are $4.00 and the fish taco is $5.50 if you want to trade up. A Michoacán kitchen on Broadway two blocks off the Promenade, open 9am most days.
Vegetarian soft tacos — potato, mushroom or veggies — are $4.68 each, so four is $18.72 for two. The other build that clears: two refried bean & cheese burritos at $9.35 each = $18.70. Meat tacos run $5.04–$5.19 and four of those tips over the line. Serving the Westside from the Olympic Boulevard corner since 1999; prices are off the shop's own online menu.
Big Tacos off the Main Street counter's own menu: veggie $5.10, pollo, carnitas or al pastor $5.42, carne asada $5.73. Two pollo plus a veggie is $15.94 for two, and adding chips and salsa ($2.98) still only reaches $18.92. Four tacos is where it breaks — that is $20.40 and over.
The best joke on this page: the most expensive-sounding burger in Santa Monica is one of the cheapest ways for two people to eat here. HiHo grinds 100% grass-fed, grass-finished New Zealand Wagyu and the Classic is $9.45, so two is $18.90 with change to spare. Standard fries are $5.25 and a shake is $6.25, both of which break it — order the burgers and nothing else. Two blocks off the Promenade, daily 11:30am–10pm.
Two plain hamburgers at $7.50 each = $15.00, priced off pierburger.com's own menu — which makes the boardwalk shack at the end of Route 66 the cheapest real meal on the Santa Monica Pier by a distance, in the one part of town built to overcharge you. Hand-formed Angus patties, Nathan's dogs, hand-spun shakes and frozen custard, on the Pier since 2012. Daily 9am–8pm.
A whole Cheese & Tomato Sauce NY-style pizza is $18.00 on the restaurant's own branded ordering site — enough to feed two, and the only sit-down Italian room on Montana Avenue where that is true. Everything else on the menu is priced for the neighbourhood: specialty pies run $24–26 and the pastas are $26–29. Order the cheese pie.
Tacos are $3.95 each on the taqueria's own Toast ordering menu, so four — two apiece — is $15.80. This is the Tijuana-style adobada spit that grew out of a 2018 pop-up into one of the most talked-about taquerias in Los Angeles, and its permanent Santa Monica shop sits at Colorado and 2nd, a block from the Promenade. Open 8am to 9pm daily.
One card per brand, each with a confirmed store inside Santa Monica city limits and each priced off the company's own menu. In a city this expensive the value menus are doing most of the work — Jack in the Box even gets drinks onto the table for $11.99.
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Jack in the Box
Jumbo Jack Meal Deal for Two · $11.99
The best complete-meal math in the city: the Jumbo Jack Meal Deal for Two — two Jumbo Jack cheeseburgers, two small fries and two small drinks — is $11.99 off the brand's own deals menu. Drinks included, which almost nothing else on this page can say.
Two six-inch Cold Cut Combos at $5.89 each = $11.78 at the Wilshire store, read off Subway's own store page rather than a national ad. Footlongs push it over; the six-inch pair is the build that holds.
Two Spicy Chicken Maxx sandwiches at $5.99 each = $11.98. The only Carl's Jr inside Santa Monica city limits — the locator confirms a single store, on Santa Monica Boulevard at 90404.
Two medium two-topping pizzas at $6.99 each = $13.98 on the Mix & Match carryout deal — the cheapest way to put actual dinner on a table for two anywhere in this city, and the leftovers are the point. Carryout; delivery pricing is different.
Priced off the store-specific Luxe Value menu for the Santa Monica Boulevard location: two value combos — two Beefy 5-Layer Burrito combos, say — land around $15 for two. Combo pricing moves; the value board is what keeps this one comfortably inside the line.
The Boneless Meal Deal — 20 boneless wings, a large fry and two dips, sized by Wingstop for two to three people — is $16.99 on the brand's own menu. One order, two people, done, from the Pico Boulevard store.
Two Bowls (one side, one entrée each) at $9.20 apiece = $18.40, off the Montana Avenue store's own menu page. Premium entrées carry a surcharge that breaks the math — keep both bowls on the standard board.
Two Guacamole Chicken Burritos at $9.99 each = $19.98 — two cents under the line, and the closest thing to a flame-grilled sit-down meal that still clears it. Store #3537 at Lincoln and Pico, confirmed on El Pollo Loco's own store page.
CPK — the chain that invented the BBQ chicken pizza in 1985 — prices like the sit-down restaurant it is: two people each ordering a main start at $33.58. The honest under-$20 route is to split. Every pizza is a 6-slice thin crust, and the cheapest, the Margherita, reads $17.69 at the 210 Wilshire Blvd store on CPK's own online ordering, August 2026 — $8.85 a head when two people share one. The Traditional Cheese is $18.69 and the Mac 'N' Cheese, the cheapest main plate at $16.79, splits the same way. With actual kids along the math turns kind: every CPKids pizza and pasta entrée is $8.49. The traps are ordering like two separate customers and the specialty list — pizzas beyond the basic three start at $19.69, and drinks push even a split pizza to the line, so it's a water-and-share play. CPK runs exactly three price tiers nationally — $16.69 to $18.69 for the same Margherita — so confirm at yours; the dine-in menu can read slightly different from the ordering site.
The cheapest two-person build we could find on each owner menu, and what it comes to. Every one is over $20 and none is more than half again over it, closest first — a miss only earns its place if you might plausibly have been about to order it. This is the part of Santa Monica most guides quietly skip.
Milo & Olive
$21.00
One Margherita, split — the cheapest pizza on the menu. Menu →
Ghisallo
$21.00
One Roman Pizza, split — cheapest of its eleven 12-inch pies. Menu →
Burger Lounge
$21.90
Two Classic grass-fed burgers at $10.95 each. Menu →
El Cholo
$21.95
Fiesta Platter for two (taquitos, nachos, quesadillas, chimichangas, guac). Menu →