Salad in Charleston

8 restaurants in Charleston list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Milano’s at $4.99, listed as Tossed Salad. The typical price across town is $8.50, and the dearest we found is $12.95 at Fazio's Italian Restaurant, so the two ends of the list are $7.96 apart, which is 160% more for the same dish. Of the 8 kitchens listed, 2 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 4 sit within a dollar of it and 2 charge more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 1106 other areas and compare them all on salad across United States. The typical price there runs $9.54 at the median, so Charleston is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 793 of the 1106. 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 Manassas, about 81 mi away, where the best price is $4.99.

Where is the cheapest salad in Charleston? Milano’s, at $4.99 on 207 Washington St W. The same dish reaches $12.95 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $7.96.

What should salad cost here? About $8.50 is the typical price across the 8 kitchens in Charleston that list it. Of the ones listed above, 2 are more than a dollar below that and 2 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 Manassas, about 81 mi away, where the best price is $4.99. That is the same as 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.