Onion Rings in San Diego

18 restaurants in San Diego list onion rings on their menus. The cheapest is Park Pizza at $4.99. The typical price across town is $8.99, and the dearest we found is $19.20 at Gaslamp Burger, so the two ends of the list are $14.21 apart, which is 285% more for the same dish. Of the 18 kitchens listed, 7 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 5 sit within a dollar of it and 6 charge more than a dollar over.

We track onion rings in 500 other areas and compare them all on onion rings across United States. The typical price there runs $7.95 at the median, so San Diego is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 71 of the 500. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.00 at Lucky's Burger and Brews in Marietta, GA, and the highest best price is $11.00 in Bellevue, WA. The nearest area with it is Santee, about 1 mi away, where the best price is $7.00.

Where is the cheapest onion rings in San Diego? Park Pizza, at $4.99 on 565 Park Blvd. The same dish reaches $19.20 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $14.21.

What should onion rings cost here? About $8.99 is the typical price across the 18 kitchens in San Diego that list it. Of the ones listed above, 7 are more than a dollar below that and 6 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 Santee, about 1 mi away, where the best price is $7.00. That is $2.01 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.