Airlines do compensate this - Usually in Europe the airline will actually directly arrange the hotel / accommodation and will offer the food in terms of voucher

Airlines do compensate this - Usually in Europe the airline will actually directly arrange the hotel / accommodation and will offer the food in terms of vouchers to spend within the airport, rather than allow passengers to spend and then claim it back. I suspect all this happened in OPs case. If you make your own arrangements then this isn’t usually covered.