Salad in Salem

12 restaurants in Salem list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Turner's Seafood at $5.49, listed as Seaweed Salad. The typical price across town is $11.75, and the dearest we found is $17.00 at Amazing Pizza, so the two ends of the list are $11.51 apart, which is 210% more for the same dish. Of the 12 kitchens listed, 6 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 3 sit within a dollar of it and 3 charge more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 1106 other areas and compare them all on salad across United States. The typical price there runs $9.50 at the median, so Salem is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 139 of the 1106. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Kennedy Pizza & Fried Chicken in Newark, NJ, and the highest best price is $13.95 in Mount Sinai, NY. The nearest area with it is Peabody, about 3 mi away, where the best price is $9.50.

Where is the cheapest salad in Salem? Turner's Seafood, at $5.49 on 43 Church Street. The same dish reaches $17.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $11.51.

What should salad cost here? About $11.75 is the typical price across the 12 kitchens in Salem that list it. Of the ones listed above, 6 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 Peabody, about 3 mi away, where the best price is $9.50. 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.