What 30,165 dishes say about how four cities eat

CallPages read every published menu in its four restaurant guides — 1,042 restaurants and 30,165 dishes in London, San Juan, San Francisco and New York. It found that 97.8% of dishes publish a price, and the median main course lands close in all four cities: $24.00 in San Juan, $25.00 in New York, £21.00 (about $28.01) in London and $28.95 in San Francisco.

Restaurant guides usually show photographs and adjectives, not numbers. Diners cannot tell what a city actually charges for dinner, and restaurants cannot see where their own menu sits. The CallPages guides publish full priced menus, so for the first time the menus themselves could be counted.

# What 30,165 dishes say about how four cities eat

Most restaurant guides are written in adjectives. Cosy. Vibrant. Hidden gem. Almost none of them answer the simplest question a diner has: what does dinner actually cost in this city — and what is everybody eating?

The CallPages restaurant guides are built differently. Every restaurant in them publishes its real menu, dish by dish, with the price printed next to the dish — the same menu you would read at the table. That made something unusual possible: we read every menu in all four guides and counted everything.

• London — the London guide: 520 restaurants, 13,821 dishes, 13,472 of them priced (97.5%).
• San Juan y Condado, Puerto Rico — the San Juan guide: 488 restaurants, 14,138 dishes, 13,838 priced (97.9%).
• San Francisco — the San Francisco guide: 18 restaurants, 994 dishes, every one priced.
• New York — the New York guide: 16 restaurants, 1,212 dishes, every one priced.

In total: 1,042 restaurants, 30,165 dishes, 29,516 published prices — 97.8%. London and San Juan are mature guides with hundreds of restaurants each; San Francisco and New York are first waves, so wherever their numbers appear we print the sample size and treat them as early signals, not verdicts. The full method — including how prices are parsed, and how pounds become dollars — is in the Methods section at the end.

The headline: dinner costs about the same everywhere

Take every dish published as a main course, line up the prices, and pick the middle one. That is the median main — the most honest single number for "what does a main course cost here?"

• San Francisco — $28.95 (n = 122 priced mains)
• London — £21.00, about $28.01 at £1 = $1.334 (n = 1,836)
• New York — $25.00 (n = 89)
• San Juan — $24.00 (n = 1,904)

Four cities, two currencies, two continents — and the median main course lands inside a five-dollar band. London's reputation as the expensive outlier survives only until you convert the currency: at the November 2026 rate, a London main is a dollar cheaper than a San Francisco one.

The median main course, by city — London converted at £1 = $1.334 (OANDA, 2026-11-10): about $28.01.

Cuisine moves the price more than the city does

Inside a city, the spread between cuisines dwarfs the spread between cities. In London, the median main at a British restaurant is £28.00 — almost exactly double the £14.25 median at a vegan restaurant. In San Juan, a Caribbean main medians $26.00 while a café main medians $15.95.

London — median main by cuisine (restaurants carrying the cuisine; priced mains in brackets):

• British — £28.00 · 66 restaurants [363 mains]
• French — £26.00 · 24 restaurants [88 mains]
• Seafood — £25.25 · 29 restaurants [139 mains]
• Café — £24.10 · 25 restaurants [64 mains]
• Turkish — £23.50 · 22 restaurants [81 mains]
• Italian — £21.95 · 46 restaurants [168 mains]
• Pizza — £20.00 · 36 restaurants [135 mains]
• Indian — £16.50 · 59 restaurants [290 mains]
• Japanese — £16.00 · 26 restaurants [64 mains]
• Vegan — £14.25 · 29 restaurants [75 mains]

San Juan — median main by cuisine:

• Caribbean — $26.00 · 60 restaurants [296 mains]
• Sushi — $25.38 · 38 restaurants [162 mains]
• Japanese — $25.25 · 35 restaurants [151 mains]
• Seafood — $25.00 · 83 restaurants [390 mains]
• Puerto Rican — $22.95 · 171 restaurants [895 mains]
• Italian — $21.95 · 46 restaurants [162 mains]
• Pizza — $20.79 · 61 restaurants [190 mains]
• Criollo — $18.95 · 68 restaurants [270 mains]
• Mexican — $17.95 · 41 restaurants [157 mains]
• Café — $15.95 · 63 restaurants [116 mains]

Two learnings stand out. First, the home cuisine is the value cuisine: Puerto Rican food is San Juan's largest category and sits below the city's overall median main, while Indian food — London's second-largest cuisine — is one of its cheapest ways to eat a main course. Second, sushi and Japanese food price like a luxury in San Juan (medians above $25) but like an everyday option in London (Japanese mains median £16.00) — the same cuisine plays a different role in different food cultures.

Cuisine moves the price of a main course more than the city does.

The same dish, four cities

Cuisine labels are fuzzy; dishes are concrete. We matched the dishes everybody serves — anything with pizza, pasta, burger, steak, sushi, taco, ramen or salad in its name — and compared medians. All figures below are USD; London's are converted at £1 = $1.334, and London's native figure is given first in each pair.

• Pizza — London £15.00 (≈ $20.01, n = 63) · San Juan $17.95 (n = 176) · San Francisco $26.00 (n = 5) · New York: only one priced pizza dish in the first wave — not enough to call.
• Pasta — London £14.15 (≈ $18.87, n = 74) · San Juan $20.00 (n = 138) · San Francisco $26.50 (n = 24) · New York $22.00 (n = 5).
• Burgers — London £16.00 (≈ $21.34, n = 121) · San Juan $15.50 (n = 129) · San Francisco $19.50 (n = 8) · New York $13.50 (n = 8). The cheapest burger city in the data is New York.
• Steak — London £33.00 (≈ $44.02, n = 179) · San Juan $29.00 (n = 314) · San Francisco $38.98 (n = 12) · New York $32.48 (n = 10). Steak is the universal splurge — the priciest everyday dish in every city — and London's steak premium is the largest single gap in this study.
• Sushi — London £13.00 (≈ $17.34, n = 97) · San Juan $17.25 (n = 209) · San Francisco $14.00 (n = 18).
• Salads — London £13.00 (≈ $17.34, n = 109) · San Juan $14.00 (n = 265) · San Francisco $16.00 (n = 32) · New York $17.00 (n = 25). The most price-stable dish in the study: a salad costs roughly the same everywhere on Earth, apparently.
• Tacos — San Juan $14.00 (n = 218) · London £13.00 (≈ $17.34, n = 36) · San Francisco $7.95 (n = 7).
• Ramen — London £16.75 (≈ $22.34, n = 30) · San Juan $22.00 (n = 7).
• Mofongo — San Juan only, and proudly: median $24.97 across 244 dishes. No other city in the study serves it at all. Some dishes are a flag.

And dessert, by name: a dish with "dessert", "cake", "brownie" or "flan" in it medians £8.00 in London (n = 259), $8.00 in San Juan (n = 292) and $7.63 in New York (n = 34). Different currencies, different continents — dessert is an eight-unit decision everywhere.

The same dish, four cities — medians in USD, London converted at £1 = $1.334.

Where the prices sit

Medians hide the shape of a city's menu. The guides sort every priced dish into bands — under £15, £15–£28, over £28 in London; under $18, $18–$32, over $32 in the dollar cities — and the shape is remarkably similar:

• London — 62% of priced dishes under £15 · 25% in the middle band · 12% over £28 (n = 13,472)
• San Juan — 65% under $18 · 27% in the middle · 8% over $32 (n = 13,838)
• San Francisco — 53% under $18 · 33% in the middle · 14% over $32 (n = 994)
• New York — 59% under $18 · 31% in the middle · 11% over $32 (n = 1,212)

In every city, most of the menu lives below the first line. The expensive tail exists — 12% of London dishes cost more than £28 — but the centre of gravity of eating out is a modestly priced dish. San Francisco has the fattest expensive tail of the four (14% over $32), consistent with its top median main.

Where the prices sit: in every city, most dishes are priced under the first band line.

The dishes a city cannot stop serving

Count how many different restaurants serve the same dish, and a city's cravings rank themselves.

San Juan's most-served dishes:

• Tostones — 48 restaurants, median $6.00. Fried green plantain is not a side in San Juan; it is infrastructure.
• Churrasco — 29 restaurants, median $27.95.
• Papas fritas — 28 restaurants, median $5.00.
• Latte — 27 restaurants, median $3.85; tres leches — 27 restaurants, median $6.62.
• Chicharrones de pollo, queso frito and mofongo — 25 restaurants each.

London's most-served dishes:

• Tiramisu — 25 restaurants, median £8.25. London's most ubiquitous dish is an Italian dessert.
• Lamb chops — 22 restaurants, median £25.00.
• Padrón peppers and chips — 20 restaurants each, medians £7.25 and £5.30.
• Burrata — 18 restaurants, median £13.50; garlic naan — 17, median £4.00; sticky toffee pudding — 16, median £9.50.

The contrast is the culture. San Juan's list is built from its own kitchen — plantain three ways, churrasco, tres leches — while London's list is a Commonwealth of imports: Italian tiramisu and burrata, Spanish padrón peppers, Indian garlic naan, and one British pudding holding the line. Both guides make the pattern explorable dish by dish: start from London's dishes or San Juan's dishes.

The dishes a city cannot stop serving — menus carrying the dish, and its median price.

Two fingerprints: 36 cuisines against 31

London's guide spans 36 cuisine tags; San Juan's spans 31. But the mix is inverted. San Juan is concentrated: Puerto Rican food alone accounts for 171 of 488 restaurants (35%), and the top of its list is local — Puerto Rican, seafood, criollo, Caribbean. London is dispersed: its biggest tag, British, covers just 66 of 520 (13%), followed by Indian (59), Italian (46), pizza (36), vegan and seafood (29 each). San Juan knows what it is; London is everything at once. Explore the mix in London's cuisines and San Juan's cocinas.

Two food capitals, two fingerprints.

Breakfast, set menus and dessert: three rituals, three stories

The guides publish standing insight pages for the rituals diners search for — London breakfast, desayunos en San Juan, London tasting and set menus, menús de degustación en San Juan and the dessert pages for London and San Juan. The numbers behind them:

• Breakfast is a bigger published ritual in San Juan. 47 San Juan restaurants publish a breakfast section (350 dishes, median $10.95) against 25 in London (278 dishes, median £12.00 — about $16.01 converted). San Juan's cafés publish breakfast; London's mostly publish lunch and dinner. In the first San Francisco and New York waves, no restaurant publishes a breakfast section yet.
• Set menus are a London habit and a San Juan occasion. 35 London restaurants publish a tasting or set menu (98 dishes, median £40.00). In San Juan only 9 do (38 dishes) — and their median set-menu dish is $135.00: there, a set menu is not a weekday lunch deal, it is the special-occasion format of the city's top rooms.
• Dessert is the most democratic course. 190 London restaurants publish a dessert section (743 dishes, median £8.50); 172 in San Juan do (535 dishes, median $8.00). In New York's first wave, 10 of 16 restaurants publish desserts (65 dishes, median $8.00) — the highest dessert coverage of any city, proportionally.

The extremes

• The biggest menu in the study is in New York: Barney Greengrass publishes 218 dishes. London's largest is Dishoom with 212, followed by Rules (133) and Noble Rot (132). San Juan's largest is New Taste with 210; San Francisco's is Tropisueno with 110.
• The most expensive dish in London is a bottle, not a plate: "Unico 2013" at £650 at Barrafina — wine lists set the ceiling everywhere. The priciest food-format item is a £500 Mega Platter at Faber.
• San Juan's ceiling is set by celebration formats: a $450 "Sparkling Evening" at Levant by Chef Michael White and a $275 black osetra caviar at Riva.
• New York's ceiling is caviar and dry-aged beef: $220 at Barney Greengrass and $220 at Locanda Verde Tribeca.
• Menu size is not price: the two 200-dish menus in the study sit at ordinary median mains. A long menu is a format, not a splurge.

The real finding: the price is printed

None of this analysis would exist if the menus were photographs. Across the four guides, 97.8% of 30,165 dishes carry a published price. At restaurant level, 446 of London's 520 restaurants (86%) and 433 of San Juan's 488 (89%) publish a price for every dish on their menu, and every restaurant in the San Francisco and New York waves does. That is the difference between a guide and a database: a diner can budget before booking, a restaurant can see exactly where its menu sits against its street and its city, and a question like "what does a burger cost in New York?" stops being a matter of opinion.

If you run a restaurant in one of these cities, your page in the guide already carries your full priced menu — and it can also answer its own phone. Every CallPages page comes with an AI voice agent that takes calls, answers menu questions and books the table. Get your free CallPage — and if your restaurant is not in its city's guide yet, that is where it starts.

Methods

• Source. All figures were computed on 2026-11-11 from the live restaurant pages of the four CallPages guides: London, San Juan y Condado, San Francisco and New York. Every menu item and price is the restaurant's own published data, shown verbatim on its page.
• What counts as a price. Statistics use only numeric prices greater than zero. "Market price", blank prices and £0.00 / $0 placeholders are excluded from every median, band and share — the same doctrine the guides themselves apply.
• Medians. A city's "median main" is the median across all dishes published in main-course sections (dish-level, n printed). Cuisine medians pool the mains of every restaurant carrying that cuisine tag; a restaurant can carry several tags, assigned from the words on its own page, so cuisine rows overlap by design.
• Dish families. Signature-dish comparisons match dish names containing the family word (pizza, pasta, burger, steak, sushi, taco, ramen, salad; "mofongo" for San Juan). Families are reported only where n ≥ 5 priced dishes, except where the text explicitly says a city does not have enough data.
• Currency. London is pounds sterling; San Juan, San Francisco and New York are US dollars. Where a comparison crosses currencies, London figures are converted at £1 = $1.334 (OANDA GBP/USD via Finnhub, 2026-11-10) and the native figure is printed alongside. Nothing is silently mixed.
• Sample sizes. London (520 restaurants) and San Juan (488) are mature guides. San Francisco (18) and New York (16) are first waves published for quality over coverage — their medians rest on 122 and 89 priced mains respectively, and their figures should be read as early signals that will firm up as the guides grow.
• Reproducibility. The dataset behind this article (per-city counts, medians, bands, cuisine tables, dish prevalence and the cross-city dish matrix) is computed from the guides' live data; the guides' own insight pages — breakfast, set menus, high-end and desserts — recompute the same statistics continuously.

How it works

1. Every restaurant page in the four CallPages guides was read on 2026-11-11: 1,042 restaurants and 30,165 listed dishes.
2. Only real numeric prices count. 'Market price', empty prices and £0.00 / $0 placeholders never enter a median or a band — the same rule the guides themselves use.
3. Medians are computed per dish across each city's menus, with the sample size (n) printed next to every figure.
4. London prices are pounds; the other three cities are dollars. Cross-currency comparisons convert London at £1 = $1.334 (OANDA GBP/USD, 2026-11-10) and say so wherever they do it.

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Innovation by Vasily Starostenko, founder of CallPages.