There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or so the old saw goes. While we can’t prove if that statement is unequivocally true or false, we can happily report that there is such a thing as a $5 lunch — at least here in the rust belt, especially if you ignore sales tax — and that it can be rewarding and delicious.

Sure, you could easily stuff your face with a Little Caesar’s HOT-N-READY pizza, put down a toum-laden Bucharest Grill shawarma or even grab a solid coney and fries for that price. And let’s not forget — shudder — the ubiquitous fast food deals. But why not work a little harder for something a little better? It turns out $5 lunches are hiding in all sorts of places around town, and in the case of these five joints, five bucks goes an awfully long way.

Specializing in Honduran food, this restaurant has happily managed to stay open for five years. It sits in a practically signless building on a lonely stretch of McGraw, west of downtown and just north of I-94. The tables are full even at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, which makes total sense once you take a big bite of a sope ($2.25) or pupusa ($2). We like to order one of each, the former with carne asada and the latter with chicharron and queso. The sope is anchored by a roughly 4-inch diameter thick tortilla with a crisp exterior and soft interior, topped with meat, lettuce, salsa, beans and crema. It doesn’t look like it’s enough to fill you up, but looks can be deceiving, and the different textures melt together in a beautiful riot of flavor. Pair it with another sope or, better yet, a pupusa, which comes with a dish of salsa and a pile of curtido, Honduran coleslaw. There are other restaurants serving up pupusas in metro Detroit, but the AEC version is recommended based purely on the curtido, the best we’ve had: thinly grated cabbage, vinegary and flecked with oregano, fermented to the point of being almost sauerkraut-like. Like everything else from the scratch kitchen, it’s made in-house and is utterly delightful. (7340 McGraw, Detroit. 313-399-3135)

You can build a smorgasbord of a lunch for under $5 at any number of Dearborn’s Middle Eastern bakeries, but New Yasmeen takes the cake (and the baklava, the maamoul and dozens of other pastry choices) with its varied cold and hot cases stuffed with Lebanese specialties. The flavors can be overpowering, so best to just give yourself over to the dill-laden cracked wheat (shoumar), the garlicky, oily, tomatoey chickpea and eggplant (mousaka), the creamy baba ghanoush, the 60-cent miniature spinach, meat or cheese pies, the slightly spicy felafel (65 cents per). How best to build your $5 feast? Start with a $1.35 za’atar manakish, a 9-inch diameter flatbread topped with the lemony thyme-sesame-sumac spice blend that comes piping hot out of the oven. After that, grab a scoop of this and a scoop of that (ask for a light scoop to stretch that 5 dollar’s worth of food by weight as far as it can go), order it to go or to stay and, most importantly, eat your heart out. If you choose to take your food with you, make sure to nibble that za’atar bread when stuck at stoplights, or reheat it when you reach your final destination — it’s meant to be consumed hot. (13900 W. Warren, Dearborn. 313-582-6035. www.yasmeenbakery.com)

We’ve sung their praises in this space in the past when talking about Detroit’s best Italian subs, but we’d be remiss to leave them off this list. Unfortunately, the price has gone up 50 cents, just squeezing under the line at exactly $5 for a 6-and-1. That’s the number of layers of meat and cheese, respectively, and the finished product is roughly 8.5 inches long, 4.5 inches wide and 3 inches high. It can take upward of half-hour to consume if you savor it correctly. Deli meats — a variety of freshly sliced salamis and hams — contrast with nutty provolone cheese, topped with mild onions, shredded lettuce, and a few slices of tomato. Choose regular vinaigrette, or spicy — both are good, although we recommend going with a kick of heat. Go ahead and return an empty pop can to scrounge up the 10 cents you’ll need to splurge on a hard roll, because while the soft roll is decent, it’s the crusty hard roll that takes this sammy to the max. (Note that the Dearborn outpost of Gonella’s, located inside La Cantina Market and run by the nicest guy in the world, is moving — market and all — to Redford in early 2016). (295 Oakwood, Detroit. 313-841-3500; and 1342 N. Telegraph, Dearborn. 313-565-7573. www.gonellas.com)

There are countless taquerias in southwest Detroit that have lunch specials, and even if they don’t you can pretty well build your own with a couple of tacos and a side of rice and beans. But our hands-down favorite is Senor Lopez, where the bottomless, warm, never stale tortilla chips come with two different salsa options, the beans are your choice of whole or refried and the tacos — we like the al pastor here — come out fresh and hot. What really sets Senor Lopez apart, though, is the welcome taco, a sort of half-size taco on a single tortilla filled with cochinita pibil, citrus-marinated shredded pork shoulder. If you love it, go ahead and order the meat as the filling for your lunch special. And if you’re famished, don’t be afraid to throw in an extra taco on the side — at $3.25, this is a value that can’t be beat. If tacos aren’t your thing, the restaurant has eight other lunch specials the cost less than half a Hamilton. (Senor Lopez also has excellent horchata to quench your thirst, but unfortunately adding it to your order pushes it over $5. Rules are rules.) (7146 Michigan, Detroit. 313-551-0685. www.senorlopezrestaurant.com)

What hasn’t been said about the wonderful sandwiches turned out by Ann Arbor’s famous deli? How about this: One of the best things they do is available only at the Bakehouse, located in an industrial park near the Ann Arbor airport on the south side of the city; it’s only offered once a week, on Wednesdays; and it’ll set you back less than 5 bucks ($4.50 to be exact), a far cry from the expensive meat stacks stuck between bread at the Kerrytown delicatessen’s main outpost. In fact, a grilled American cheese on white bread costs a full $8.99 there. But over at Bakehouse, on a good day, you can build a nice little free appetizer of baked goods samples while you wait for your grilled cheese to finish cooking. And when you’re feeling flush, grab dessert down the block at Zingerman’s Creamery, home to fantastic gelato. Then again, you don’t really need dessert, because, oh, that grilled cheese! You can get it plain, but that would be silly when you can get it with the works for the same price, where aged white cheddar, sliced tomato, and a shmear of tangy honey mustard come together in perfect harmony between two slices of fresh sourdough.  It doesn't get much better than that.  (3711 Plaza, Ann Arbor. 734-761-2095. www.zingermansbakehouse.com)