Piccata in Long Branch

3 restaurants in Long Branch list piccata on their menus. The cheapest is John's Pizza & Grill at $18.99, listed as Chicken Piccata. The typical price across town is $20.99, and the dearest we found is $25.49 at Scala's Pizzeria, so the two ends of the list are $6.50 apart, which is 34% 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 piccata in 155 other areas and compare them all on piccata across United States. The typical price there runs $22.00 at the median, so Long Branch is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 91 of the 155. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $9.95 at Joe's Pizza, Pasta & Subs in Fort Worth, TX, and the highest best price is $26.50 in Hampton Bays, NY. The nearest area with it is Neptune, about 6 mi away, where the best price is $21.50.

Where is the cheapest piccata in Long Branch? John's Pizza & Grill, at $18.99 on 229 3rd Ave. The same dish reaches $25.49 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $6.50.

What should piccata cost here? About $20.99 is the typical price across the 3 kitchens in Long Branch 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 Neptune, about 6 mi away, where the best price is $21.50. That is $2.51 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.