Falafel in Somerville

3 restaurants in Somerville list falafel on their menus. The cheapest is Venus Pizza at $8.99. The typical price across town is $10.50, and the dearest we found is $14.95 at All-Star Sandwich Bar, so the two ends of the list are $5.96 apart, which is 66% 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 falafel in 11 other areas and compare them all on falafel across United States. The typical price there runs $9.99 at the median, so Somerville is dearer than most of them, with a lower typical price than 5 of the 11. The lowest best price anywhere we cover is $4.99 at Falafel And Amba Restaurant in Sterling Heights, MI, and the highest best price is $11.00 in Cambridge, MA. The nearest area with it is Cambridge, about 1 mi away, where the best price is $11.00.

Where is the cheapest falafel in Somerville? Venus Pizza, at $8.99 on 1293 Broadway. The same dish reaches $14.95 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $5.96.

What should falafel cost here? About $10.50 is the typical price across the 3 kitchens in Somerville 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 Cambridge, about 1 mi away, where the best price is $11.00. 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.