Lentil Soup in Long Island City

4 restaurants in Long Island City list lentil soup on their menus. The cheapest is La Mia Pizza at $6.00. The typical price across town is $7.95, and the dearest we found is $8.00 at The Inkan, so the two ends of the list are $2.00 apart, which is 33% more for the same dish. Of the 4 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 3 sit within a dollar of it and 0 charge more than a dollar over.

We track lentil soup in 15 other areas and compare them all on lentil soup across United States. The typical price there runs $8.27 at the median, so Long Island City is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 8 of the 15. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.99 at Perfecto Pizza in Jamaica, NY, and the highest best price is $8.02 in Massapequa Park, NY. The nearest area with it is Sunnyside, about 2 mi away, where the best price is $8.00.

Where is the cheapest lentil soup in Long Island City? La Mia Pizza, at $6.00 on 1580 1st Avenue. The same dish reaches $8.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $2.00.

What should lentil soup cost here? About $7.95 is the typical price across the 4 kitchens in Long Island City that list it. Of the ones listed above, 1 is 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 Sunnyside, about 2 mi away, where the best price is $8.00. That is $2.00 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.