Calamari in Santa Cruz

3 restaurants in Santa Cruz list calamari on their menus. The cheapest is Hook + Line at $15.00, listed as FRIED CALAMARI. The typical price across town is $19.00, and the dearest we found is $21.00 at Riva Fish House, so the two ends of the list are $6.00 apart, which is 40% more for the same dish. Of the 3 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 1 sits within a dollar of it and 1 charges more than a dollar over.

We track calamari in 493 other areas and compare them all on calamari across United States. The typical price there runs $15.42 at the median, so Santa Cruz is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 24 of the 493. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.50 at French Quarter Grille in Austin, TX, and the highest best price is $19.75 in Harwood Heights, IL. The nearest area with it is Monterey, about 27 mi away, where the best price is $15.00.

Where is the cheapest calamari in Santa Cruz? Hook + Line, at $15.00. The same dish reaches $21.00 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $6.00.

What should calamari cost here? About $19.00 is the typical price across the 3 kitchens in Santa Cruz that list it. Of the ones listed above, 1 is 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 Monterey, about 27 mi away, where the best price is $15.00. That is the same as 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.