French Fries in New York

91 restaurants in New York list french fries on their menus, and the 40 cheapest are listed above. The cheapest is Little Italy Pizza & Restaurant at $4.00. The typical price across town is $6.85, and the dearest of the 40 listed is $6.25 at La Vera Pizza, so the two ends of the list are $2.25 apart, which is 56% more for the same dish. Of the 40 kitchens listed, 31 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 9 sit within a dollar of it and 0 charge more than a dollar over.

We track french fries in 498 other areas and compare them all on french fries across United States. The typical price there runs $6.49 at the median, so New York is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 181 of the 498. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Big Tony's Pizza II in Chicago, IL, and the highest best price is $7.50 in Seaford, NY. The nearest area with it is Maspeth, about 3 mi away, where the best price is $5.50.

Where is the cheapest french fries in New York? Little Italy Pizza & Restaurant, at $4.00 on 876 Broadway. The same dish reaches $6.25 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $2.25.

What should french fries cost here? About $6.85 is the typical price across the 91 kitchens in New York that list it. Of the ones listed above, 31 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.

Is it cheaper nearby? The nearest area we track it in is Maspeth, about 3 mi away, where the best price is $5.50. That is $1.50 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.