New Yorkers have something else to be crabby about.
In addition to soaring rents and taxi fares, sushi prices in the Big Apple gained an average of 10 percent in the past year to overtake Los Angeles as the most expensive city for raw fish and rice, according to the Sushinomics Cost-of-Living Index, compiled by Bloomberg. The measure is based on a survey of prices for spicy tuna and California rolls at restaurants in 25 major U.S. cities.
Takashi Sando, the owner of Marumi restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village said the city's high sushi prices are a good indicator of its cost of living.
"It's not only for sushi restaurants, because the rent is more expensive than any other area for that space, so they have to cover the expenses," he said by telephone from New York. "Also, the people that live here have to pay more money to the chef, otherwise they cannot live in New York City."
San Francisco maintained its rank as the third most expensive sushi city, while Dallas and Sacramento, California, jumped into the top five from 12th and 10th places, respectively. Prices in Charlotte, North Carolina, climbed 12 percent, the biggest percentage increase.
The least expensive city for sushi was New Orleans, with Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Oregon; San Jose, California, and Chicago rounding out the bottom five. Only Orlando, Florida, and Minneapolis/St. Paul had sushi prices decline.
The index shows the cost of living in the cities increased 5.5 percent from a year earlier, compared with an average gain of 1.9 percent for the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index. About 40 percent of the restaurants that also were surveyed last year raised their prices by an average $0.22 for a California roll and $0.27 for a spicy tuna roll.
Bloomberg used the survey to find the average price for all 25 cities and then compared each locale to that figure. New York scored 133, meaning sushi prices there were 33 percent above the average. Los Angeles scored 127.7 and New Orleans, with the cheapest rolls, had a rating of 80.
The Sushinomics Cost-of-Living Index in 25 cities and their rankings, with 100 as average. New York 132.98 Los Angeles 127.68 San Francisco 119.22 Dallas 115.18 Sacramento 111.66 Minneapolis/St. Paul 110.97 Seattle 110.70 Austin 110.32 Denver 108.31 Miami 108.06 Boston 107.98 St. Louis 107.61 Atlanta 107.12 Philadelphia 105.53 Orlando 105.36 Phoenix/Tempe 105.07 Wilmington 100.50 Houston 100.11 Charlotte 98.43 Washington 95.31 Chicago 94.98 San Jose 94.75 Portland 92.29 Columbus 86.37 New Orleans 79.98
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