Mozzarella Sticks in La Mesa

4 restaurants in La Mesa list mozzarella sticks on their menus. The cheapest is Uncle Joey's Pizza & Grill at $5.99. The typical price across town is $9.44, and the dearest we found is $12.99 at New York New York Pizza, so the two ends of the list are $7.00 apart, which is 117% more for the same dish. Of the 4 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 2 sit within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track mozzarella sticks in 700 other areas and compare them all on mozzarella sticks across United States. The typical price there runs $9.95 at the median, so La Mesa is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 413 of the 700. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Master's Pizza in New York, NY, and the highest best price is $11.28 in Lake Grove, NY. The nearest area with it is El Cajon, about 4 mi away, where the best price is $6.99.

Where is the cheapest mozzarella sticks in La Mesa? Uncle Joey's Pizza & Grill, at $5.99 on 7520 El Cajon Boulevard. The same dish reaches $12.99 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $7.00.

What should mozzarella sticks cost here? About $9.44 is the typical price across the 4 kitchens in La Mesa 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 El Cajon, about 4 mi away, where the best price is $6.99. That is $1.00 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.