Salad in Columbia

14 restaurants in Columbia list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Legacy Caribbean Bar & Grill at $4.55. The typical price across town is $8.99, and the dearest we found is $16.00 at Hampton Street Vineyard, so the two ends of the list are $11.45 apart, which is 252% more for the same dish. Of the 14 kitchens listed, 4 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 4 sit within a dollar of it and 6 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 $9.50 at the median, so Columbia is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 654 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 Lexington, about 16 mi away, where the best price is $4.00.

Where is the cheapest salad in Columbia? Legacy Caribbean Bar & Grill, at $4.55 on 215 O'Neil Court. The same dish reaches $16.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $11.45.

What should salad cost here? About $8.99 is the typical price across the 14 kitchens in Columbia that list it. Of the ones listed above, 4 are more than a dollar below that and 6 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 Lexington, about 16 mi away, where the best price is $4.00. That is $0.55 less than the best here, though whether that is worth the journey is your call.

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.