Salad in San Jose

34 restaurants in San Jose list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Pizza Maria at $5.61, listed as Fresh Garden Salad. The typical price across town is $9.50, and the dearest we found is $13.00 at District, so the two ends of the list are $7.39 apart, which is 132% more for the same dish. Of the 34 kitchens listed, 10 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 15 sit within a dollar of it and 9 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 San Jose is about average, with a lower typical price than 551 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 Santa Clara, about 6 mi away, where the best price is $6.00.

Where is the cheapest salad in San Jose? Pizza Maria, at $5.61 on 302 Toyon Ave. The same dish reaches $13.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $7.39.

What should salad cost here? About $9.50 is the typical price across the 34 kitchens in San Jose that list it. Of the ones listed above, 10 are more than a dollar below that and 9 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 Santa Clara, about 6 mi away, where the best price is $6.00. That is $0.39 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.