Salad in Chicago

212 restaurants in Chicago list salad on their menus, and the 40 cheapest are listed above. The cheapest is Mama Luna's Restaurant & Pizzeria at $4.00, listed as Garden Salad. The typical price across town is $10.49, and the dearest of the 40 listed is $6.49 at New York Halal Pizza, so the two ends of the list are $2.49 apart, which is 62% more for the same dish. Of the 40 kitchens listed, 40 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 0 sit within a dollar of it and 0 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 Chicago is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 302 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 Cicero, about 2 mi away, where the best price is $4.50.

Where is the cheapest salad in Chicago? Mama Luna's Restaurant & Pizzeria, at $4.00 on 5109 W Fullerton Ave. The same dish reaches $6.49 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $2.49.

What should salad cost here? About $10.49 is the typical price across the 212 kitchens in Chicago that list it. Of the ones listed above, 40 are more than a dollar below that and 0 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 Cicero, about 2 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.