Like so many other New Yorkers, Hani Mahmoud loves to go out to eat and try new things — but in an inflation-plagued city where everything seems to cost too much, the Upper West Sider struggles to avoid going broke from his love of food.

And while landing a good meal for, say, $10 in 2024 might seem like a 1950s pipe dream, Mahmoud has found a way to regularly score enviable eats on the cheap by bagging uneaten grub that restaurants plan to throw out.

It’s a hobby that has saved him nearly $1,700 in just two years — and no, he’s not a dumpster diver.

The 32-year-old public health worker uses TooGoodToGo, an app imported from Denmark that strives to curb food waste by helping customers find and “rescue” unwanted food from eateries and groceries — like a truffle hound, except the prize is a discount meal from a pricey venue like Eataly.

From there, Mahmoud scored a lavish meal comprised of a 9×11 inch sheet pan of lasagna, along with focaccia, salad and other top-notch items, all for a paltry $12 — around half the price of a far more basic burger meal at a Five Guys outlet in NYC.

“It sounded like a great way to try different restaurants around the city at a fraction of the cost,” New Yorker Mahmoud told The Post of giving the app — which launched here in 2020 — a whirl.

“This is one way to try and combat [food waste] while also giving the restaurants and the small businesses some support for things that they wouldn’t be able to sell,” he said.

Mahmoud is one of many wallet-weary diners and grocery shoppers turning to various dough-saving trackers like TooGoodToGo, or the Toronto-based Flashfood, which has made significant inroads into NYC via a partnership with Stop & Shop.

These apps are a welcome addition to the Big Apple, where food prices have become stratospheric amid inflation. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, food away from home costs in the New York Area surged 5.3% from February 2023 to February 2024.

US consumers spent 11.3% of their disposable income on food in 2022 – the most since the 1991 Gulf War – as inflation jacked up prices on everything from groceries to fast food. (To wit: McDonald’s $18 Big Mac meal.)

Those signing up for TGTG score bags of excess or soon-to-be-expired inventory from participating establishments in their vicinity for around a third of the regular price — the big catch being that diners don’t know what’s in the bag beforehand.

Signing up and scrolling the deals is easy — businesses post their offerings, along with an estimate of the original value, giving the app user an idea of what kind of bargain they’re getting. You then reserve your mystery order — the most popular spots go within minutes sometimes — pay and pick up within a designated timeframe, ranging from right now to later in the day.

And while snagging tea sandwiches and macarons from Parisian macaron macher Ladurée for pennies on the dollar might be a lot of fun — Mahmoud recently paid $3.99 for a $12 bag from the French baker — there’s a serious mission behind the app.

Signing up and scrolling the deals is easy — businesses post their offerings, along with an estimate of the original value, giving the app user an idea of what kind of bargain they’re getting. You then reserve your mystery order — the most popular spots go within minutes sometimes — pay and pick up within a designated timeframe, ranging from right now to later in the day.

Founded in 2016 in Copenhagen, TGTG was conceived as a way to combat the globe’s food surplus problem — which sees 80 million tons of food wasted in the US alone each year — by saving “bags of surplus food from going to waste at a great price.”

The food finder quickly took off and is now available in 27 states, boasts 92 million registered users and 217,000 active partners across Europe and North America.

In New York City alone, TGTG features 7,000 affiliated businesses, ranging from the JustSalad chain to dumpling purveyor Joe’s Shanghai in Chinatown.

This has kept Mahmoud well-fed.

“If you’re lucky, you’ll get a fancy elaborate pastry or mini cake that would normally be 12, 15 bucks,” he said. “[Sometimes] the restaurant might’ve had way more going to waste that day than they expected, and then you end up getting way more than the value than advertised.”

He prefers pizza places and other specialty restaurants because you know — roughly — what to expect.

But, like so many New York users of the app — which allows you to rate every business you buy from, using the five-star system — what he really craves are the Eataly deals, which are often nearly impossible to get.