Salad in San Mateo

10 restaurants in San Mateo list salad on their menus. The cheapest is Aldo's Pizza at $6.00, listed as Tossed Green Salad. The typical price across town is $8.99, and the dearest we found is $12.65 at North Beach Pizza, so the two ends of the list are $6.65 apart, which is 111% more for the same dish. Of the 10 kitchens listed, 2 charge more than a dollar under the typical price, 7 sit within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track salad in 1103 other areas and compare them all on salad across United States. The typical price there runs $9.50 at the median, so San Mateo is cheaper than most of them, with a lower typical price than 650 of the 1103. 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 San Bruno, about 7 mi away, where the best price is $6.89.

Where is the cheapest salad in San Mateo? Aldo's Pizza, at $6.00 on 600 S Norfolk St. The same dish reaches $12.65 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $6.65.

What should salad cost here? About $8.99 is the typical price across the 10 kitchens in San Mateo that list it. Of the ones listed above, 2 are more than a dollar below that and 1 is 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 San Bruno, about 7 mi away, where the best price is $6.89. That is $0.89 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.