When was the last time you lunched on a cheap-o Bento box? Or an $8 midday sushi special? 

For me, such meals recall a time in the mid-aughts, when I was a broke college kid (or recent post-grad) just getting to know food from beyond New England. Usually alone, and living in Colorado Springs or Chicago, I'd bike to some hole-in-the-wall sushi joint and order the lunch special. For $8 to $12, I'd get five to seven pieces of nigiri and a California roll, or maybe three basic maki. Once in a while, I'd mix it up with tempura or dumplings.

The servers invariably spoke minimal English. But they were nonintrusive and efficient; some at my regular haunts knew my standard order, and they'd just nod and bring it over. Between bites of unadorned fish and nibbles of sticky rice, I'd read a book or the newspaper. 

The food was nothing special. But it was fresh (even the seediest sushi spots know better than to serve past-prime fish), and I could sort of afford it.  Those quiet solo sojourns felt grown-up, cosmopolitan, modern. 

Then one day (perhaps at a pinnacle of broke-ness), I stopped going. My mind mothballed the meals in some corner of my memory.

Until yesterday, that is, when occasion landed me at Asian Gourmet in Barre. The pan-Asian menu meanders through pages of steamed meats and veggies, udon noodle bowls, pad Thai and Chinese American plates like General Tsao's chicken. Japanese offerings include tempura, gyoza and signature maki rolls stuffed with eel and cucumber and avocado or tuna-times-two and double tobiko. During lunch, few dishes break $10.

And on the very last page I spotted a sushi special with circa-2004 prices. Sashimi or nigiri plus a roll and miso soup was $8 to $12; two- or three-roll combos cost the same.

I went for the $12 three-roll special (my old-time go-to, which always seemed like the best value), with spicy tuna, yellowtail and California roll. Another time, I might choose a Bento box with teriyaki, tempura or negimaki (rolled meat with scallions). That includes salad, California roll, fruit and petite shrimp dumplings for $8 to $10. Or maybe, a Chinese entrée with soup and rice for $6 or $7. 

The fish was clean, cool and fresh. As at the pared-down spots of my past, I savored the virtue of keeping basics basic.

This time, I ate with a girlfriend instead of a book. But as we caught up over tiny glasses of sake under a tree on the porch, steps above the tractor-trailers and dump trucks rolling down Route 302,  the food tasted like reconnecting with an old, familiar friend.

Dining on a Dime is a weekly series featuring well-made, filling bites (something substantial enough to qualify as a small meal or better) for $12 or less. Know of a tasty dish we should feature? Drop us a line: food@sevendaysvt.com.

Some days in the summer I mainly eat tomatoes, bread and doorstop-worthy wedges of cheese to avoid the heat of the kitchen. When I’m not cooking for work, my August meals are often a hodgepodge assembly of things that don’t need fire to be palatable.

To be sure, one of the finest things about summer is a heavy, ripe tomato sliced and slicked in olive oil — the heel reserved for coarse salt and eaten in three bites over the sink. Yet there comes a time when I’m hit with a meat craving that halts me mid-stride. Red meat, specifically. A thick, stacked, pub-style cheeseburger. Eaten outside with a beer so cold it hurts my teeth, which is only the proper temperature for beer when it's 90 degrees outside with 85 percent humidity.

That’s how I ended up on the shaded patio at Worthy Burger last weekend.

After perusing a swoon-worthy draft list stocked with rotating local gems — such as Hill Farmstead, Burlington Beer Company, Zero Gravity and Tunbridge’s recently opened Upper Pass Beer Co. — I tucked into a cheddar cheeseburger and a draft of Swamp Monster in Love, newcomer River Roost’s crisp, biting pale ale. The patty was fat and gloriously funky from its former life as a grass-grazing cow from the town next door. It was grilled to a blushing medium rare by the wood fire crackling in Worthy’s open kitchen, and trimmed with Plymouth cheddar, lettuce, red onion and a slab of tomato.

At only $8 ($7 without the cheese) for a wood-grilled, locally raised and grass-fed cheeseburger with quality accoutrements, this burger quelled my animal-meat craving without eating my wallet in the process. My date and I also split an order of beef-tallow fries and a zippy, perfectly acidic plate of housemade pickles for less than $4 each, which still kept me at my $12 budget. 

Nestled in a renovated railway house along South Royalton's train tracks, Worthy Burger is a proper name for such a sterling pitstop. Bonus note: Next door's South Royalton Market has a freezer full of ice cream sandwiches and hard-to-find growler fills from three rotating taps.

Dining on a Dime is a weekly series featuring well-made, filling bites (something substantial enough to qualify as a small meal or better) for $12 or less. Know of a tasty dish we should feature? Drop us a line: food@sevendaysvt.com.

It wasn't hard for me to convince my friend and dance teacher, Jon Bacon Jr., to have lunch with me. "I'm going to a mead hall," I explained. "You'll have to eat herring." Sold. 

Neither Beowulf nor Grendel were in sight as we pulled up at Colchester's Mead Hall, located inside of the Groennfell and Havoc meaderies, fairly close to Costco. 

The interior is all working meadery, with floor-to-ceiling vats, stacks of cans and a bar at which to order libations and snacks. 

After trying free samples of a variety of dry, clean-tasting honey wines — including one flavored with apple and vanilla and another with cranberries — we settled down at a high table, mugs in hand, and awaited our food. 

In order to "dine on a dime," we shared the $20 Viking Feast platter, and it turned out to be plenty: herring three ways (my favorite was the variation with mustard, but the sour cream and wine versions were also fishy and delicious), a trio of  Scandinavian cheeses (Gjetost, Jarlsberg and Danablu), dark bread, a pair of bratwurst, and Danish beets, which were cooked for a long time and tasted of the sea. All of the food items are available singly, too. 

Sometimes it's hard to ride the line between authenticity and caricature. Colchester's Mead Hall strikes the perfect balance of good cheer and serious attention to the quality of its products. I will definitely return. 

P.S. Luckily, it was nothing like this: 

...Then was this mead-house at morning tide 
dyed with gore, when the daylight broke, 
all the boards of the benches blood-besprinkled, 
gory the hall: I had heroes the less, 
doughty dear-ones that death had reft. 
— But sit to the banquet, unbind thy words, 
hardy hero, as heart shall prompt thee.” 
Gathered together, the Geatish men 
in the banquet-hall on bench assigned, 
sturdy-spirited, sat them down, 
hardy-hearted. A henchman attended, 
carried the carven cup in hand, 
served the clear mead. 

—From "Beowulf," translated by Francis B. Gummere

Dining on a Dime is a weekly series featuring well-made, filling bites (something substantial enough to qualify as a small meal or better) for $12 or less. Know of a tasty dish we should feature? Drop us a line: food@sevendaysvt.com.