DW & I have found a great, safe, & relatively cheap way to dine out that was right under our collective noses. Here in Sacramento, CA (and also in San Jose, where we came from), there are restaurants adverising as "Mongolian BBQ". These are usually fairly small operations offering an 'all you can eat' meal.
The drill is that you grab a bowl & get in a buffet-type line going down a table of 'ingredients': frozen slices of meat (pork, beef, turkey, & lamb at our local place); vegetables ( like cabbage, bell peppers, celery, spinach, cilantro, mushrooms, water chestnuts,green onions, carrots, bean sprouts, noodles, you get the idea); & oils/sauces(a house sauce, teriyaki sauce, cooking wine, vegetable oil, ginger, a 'spicy' chili oil, sesame oil, etc). You load your bowl with what you want, & add what ever oil or sauce you want your food cooked in. Then you hand your bowl to the cook, who is working around a big, round, flat, skillet-y contraption, & he swirls it around on top for a minute or two, basically stir-frying it right in front of you. He hands it back; you go to your table & eat, & if you're still hungry, you grab another bowl, & repeat the process as often as you want.
At our local place, they bring you a little scoop of fried rice, some starchy egg-drop soup concoction, & a little basket of sweet cookie/breads. Of Course, all these are on our 'verboten' list. We load our bowls up w/ meat, & relatively 'safe' veggies (I like pork & beef & cabbage & mushrooms in spicy oil). We drink water (though this kind of meal is where I most miss a cold beer), & get out of there for $17, plus a couple of bucks in the cooks' tip jar ( I pity those guys in the summer: standing over that griddle fore who knows how long at a stretch, & they don't turn on the air conditioner until... well, they don't turn it on soon, or high, enough).
$20 bucks for the two of us, & we eat as much as we want of what we decide, no waste (I'm sure the breads go back into a communal bin somewhere, we ask for them to not bring the soup & rice). If you've got an establishment like this in your town, burg, or hamlet, I can't recommend it enough!