Calamari in Cincinnati

3 restaurants in Cincinnati list calamari on their menus. The cheapest is Montgomery Inn at $7.99, listed as Fried Calamari. The typical price across town is $15.00, and the dearest we found is $20.00 at Eddie Merlot’s, so the two ends of the list are $12.01 apart, which is 150% more for the same dish. Of the 3 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 1 sits within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track calamari in 493 other areas and compare them all on calamari across United States. The typical price there runs $15.45 at the median, so Cincinnati is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 255 of the 493. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.50 at French Quarter Grille in Austin, TX, and the highest best price is $19.75 in Harwood Heights, IL. The nearest area with it is Louisville, about 92 mi away, where the best price is $9.00.

Where is the cheapest calamari in Cincinnati? Montgomery Inn, at $7.99 on 9440 Montgomery Road. The same dish reaches $20.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $12.01.

What should calamari cost here? About $15.00 is the typical price across the 3 kitchens in Cincinnati 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 Louisville, about 92 mi away, where the best price is $9.00. That is $1.01 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.