Edamame in Charleston

5 restaurants in Charleston list edamame on their menus. The cheapest is King Street Foods at $4.00. The typical price across town is $5.99, and the dearest we found is $7.00 at Shokudô, so the two ends of the list are $3.00 apart, which is 75% more for the same dish. Of the 5 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 3 sit within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track edamame in 13 other areas and compare them all on edamame across United States. The typical price there runs $6.12 at the median, so Charleston is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 10 of the 13. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Shiku in Seattle, WA, and the highest best price is $5.50 in Naples, FL. The nearest area with it is Wilmington, about 154 mi away, where the best price is $4.50.

Where is the cheapest edamame in Charleston? King Street Foods, at $4.00 on 347 King Street. The same dish reaches $7.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $3.00.

What should edamame cost here? About $5.99 is the typical price across the 5 kitchens in Charleston that list it. Of the ones listed above, 1 is more than a dollar below that and 1 is 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 Wilmington, about 154 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.