Fried Eggplant in New Orleans

3 restaurants in New Orleans list fried eggplant on their menus. The cheapest is Liuzza's by the Track at $8.95. The typical price across town is $9.95, and the dearest we found is $10.95 at Two Tony's Restaurant, so the two ends of the list are $2.00 apart, which is 22% more for the same dish. Of the 3 kitchens listed, 0 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 3 sit within a dollar of it and 0 charge more than a dollar over.

New Orleans is the only area where we track fried eggplant at the moment, so there is no other town to set these prices against yet.

Where is the cheapest fried eggplant in New Orleans? Liuzza's by the Track, at $8.95 on 1518 N Lopez. The same dish reaches $10.95 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $2.00.

What should fried eggplant cost here? About $9.95 is the typical price across the 3 kitchens in New Orleans that list it. Of the ones listed above, 0 are 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.

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.