Calamari in Ottawa

11 restaurants in Ottawa list calamari on their menus. The cheapest is Chopp Chop Thai Street Food at $11.95, listed as Fried Calamari. The typical price across town is $19.00, and the dearest we found is $22.00 at Hometown Sports Grill, so the two ends of the list are $10.05 apart, which is 84% more for the same dish. Of the 11 kitchens listed, 4 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 5 sit within a dollar of it and 2 charge more than a dollar over.

We track calamari in 16 other areas and compare them all on calamari across Canada. The typical price there runs $18.00 at the median, so Ottawa is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 5 of the 16. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $9.00 at Joe Muer Seafood in Windsor, ON, and the highest best price is $16.95 in Grande Prairie, AB. The nearest area with it is Whitby, about 302 km away, where the best price is $16.00.

Where is the cheapest calamari in Ottawa? Chopp Chop Thai Street Food, at $11.95 on 5929 Jeanne-d'Arc Boulevard South. The same dish reaches $22.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $10.05.

What should calamari cost here? About $19.00 is the typical price across the 11 kitchens in Ottawa that list it. Of the ones listed above, 4 are more than a dollar below that and 2 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 Whitby, about 302 km away, where the best price is $16.00. That is $4.05 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.