Wings in New Orleans

10 restaurants in New Orleans list wings on their menus. The cheapest is Midway Pizza at $10.00, listed as Jumbo Chicken Wings. The typical price across town is $14.00, and the dearest we found is $22.00 at Above the Grid, so the two ends of the list are $12.00 apart, which is 120% more for the same dish. Of the 10 kitchens listed, 5 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 2 sit within a dollar of it and 3 charge more than a dollar over.

We track wings in 969 other areas and compare them all on wings across United States. The typical price there runs $12.98 at the median, so New Orleans is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 235 of the 969. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.25 at Uno Pizza in Philadelphia, PA, and the highest best price is $17.55 in Paramus, NJ. The nearest area with it is Baton Rouge, about 75 mi away, where the best price is $10.95.

Where is the cheapest wings in New Orleans? Midway Pizza, at $10.00 on 4725 Freret Street. The same dish reaches $22.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $12.00.

What should wings cost here? About $14.00 is the typical price across the 10 kitchens in New Orleans that list it. Of the ones listed above, 5 are more than a dollar below that and 3 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 Baton Rouge, about 75 mi away, where the best price is $10.95. That is $0.95 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.