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In truth though middle eastern or Chinese restaurants aren’t actually ‘better value’ than most ‘Western’ restaurants if value corresponds to costly food items (like meat protein). Sure, actual fine dining has a higher cost:ingredients ratio for obvious reasons (higher paid staff, more skill and time involved in preparation etc), but the amount of protein you get for your $30 isn’t higher at the average Chinese restaurant compared to the average ‘American’ cuisine restaurant.
What tends to happen is that ‘ethnic’ food places (including traditional “red sauce” Italian-American restaurants in the US, although less so in Europe) offer you a ton of cheap/free relatively tasteless carbs which cost them almost nothing to provide. My grandfather’s favorite Italian restaurant of 50 years on Long Island would serve every entree with a colossal bowl of spaghetti with tomato sauce. I suppose this counts as cheap calories, but I don’t know that it really improves the value proposition of the restaurant.
Similarly, a lot of classic Chinese export dishes at Western Chinese restaurants have a pretty small amount of meat and large amount of cheap vegetables like onions and bell peppers.
If we're talking about dollars per gram of protein, Asian food is the best ime as a vegetarian. These days you might find some meat replacements in western restaurants, but it's still somewhat rare. Lentils are not bad, but have way more carbs than protein. Meanwhile in Chinese restaurants there's plenty of tofu and seitan on the menu.
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