Salad in Austin

34 restaurants in Austin list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Raku Sushi & Asian Bistro at $4.00, listed as Garden Salad. The typical price across town is $9.99, and the dearest we found is $22.50 at Local Foods, so the two ends of the list are $18.50 apart, which is 462% more for the same dish. Of the 34 kitchens listed, 15 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 6 sit within a dollar of it and 13 charge more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 1103 other areas and compare them all on salad across United States. The typical price there runs $9.50 at the median, so Austin is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 412 of the 1103. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Kennedy Pizza & Fried Chicken in Newark, NJ, and the highest best price is $13.95 in Mount Sinai, NY. The nearest area with it is Killeen, about 62 mi away, where the best price is $4.50.

Where is the cheapest salad in Austin? Raku Sushi & Asian Bistro, at $4.00 on 2222 Rio Grande Street. The same dish reaches $22.50 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $18.50.

What should salad cost here? About $9.99 is the typical price across the 34 kitchens in Austin that list it. Of the ones listed above, 15 are more than a dollar below that and 13 are more than a dollar above, so the typical price is a middle rather than a floor.

Is it cheaper nearby? The nearest area we track it in is Killeen, about 62 mi away, where the best price is $4.50. That is $0.50 more than the best price here.

Why do the prices differ so much? We compare what each menu calls the same dish, and menus are not identical: portion, cut, sides and the kind of room you are sitting in all ride on the price, and none of that shows up in a number. Part portions and half sizes are kept out of this comparison, and a chain charging the same at several addresses is counted once, so the spread above is between genuinely different kitchens rather than the same one repeated.