Dal Makhani in Sunnyvale

4 restaurants in Sunnyvale list dal makhani on their menus. The cheapest is Peppermint Indian restaurant at $12.99. The typical price across town is $15.00, and the dearest we found is $15.48 at The Gurkha Kitchen, so the two ends of the list are $2.49 apart, which is 19% more for the same dish. Of the 4 kitchens listed, 1 charges more than a dollar under the typical price, 3 sit within a dollar of it and 0 charge more than a dollar over.

Sunnyvale is the only area where we track dal makhani at the moment, so there is no other town to set these prices against yet.

Where is the cheapest dal makhani in Sunnyvale? Peppermint Indian restaurant, at $12.99 on 1169 West El Camino Real. The same dish reaches $15.48 elsewhere in town, so where you order it changes the bill by $2.49.

What should dal makhani cost here? About $15.00 is the typical price across the 4 kitchens in Sunnyvale that list it. Of the ones listed above, 1 is more than a dollar below that and 0 are more than a dollar above, so the typical price is a middle rather than a floor.

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.