Lasagna in New York

220 restaurants in New York list lasagna on their menus, and the 40 cheapest are listed above. The cheapest is Ranch Deli at $7.99. The typical price across town is $16.10, and the dearest of the 40 listed is $12.75 at Original Joe's Pizzeria, so the two ends of the list are $4.76 apart, which is 60% more for the same dish. Of the 40 kitchens listed, 40 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 0 sit within a dollar of it and 0 charge more than a dollar over.

We track lasagna in 609 other areas and compare them all on lasagna across United States. The typical price there runs $17.50 at the median, so New York is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 421 of the 609. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $6.00 at Vitale's Sports Bar Ada in Grand Rapids, MI, and the highest best price is $26.00 in Memphis, TN. The nearest area with it is Maspeth, about 3 mi away, where the best price is $12.00.

Where is the cheapest lasagna in New York? Ranch Deli, at $7.99 on 856 Amsterdam Ave. The same dish reaches $12.75 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $4.76.

What should lasagna cost here? About $16.10 is the typical price across the 220 kitchens in New York that list it. Of the ones listed above, 40 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 $12.00. That is $4.01 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.