New York is the most expensive major US city for a first date, with the average evening for two coming in at $122, according to new research analyzing restaurant pricing across 22 of the country’s largest cities.

The study looked at over 500 sit-down restaurants listed on OpenTable and modeled a standard first-date order of one shared starter, two main courses, and two cocktails. New York led the table at $122, followed by Washington DC, Denver, and San Francisco, all of which came in above $117. Philadelphia was the cheapest city in the ranking at $76 for two, a difference of $46 per evening with New York, and the largest spread in the study.

For New York daters, drink pricing accounts for much of the gap. The national average cocktail in OpenTable-listed restaurants came in at $13.54, and pricing in New York sits at the top end of that distribution. Philadelphia’s average cocktail was $7.29, just over half the national figure. Main courses also came in well below the national median in Philadelphia, at $26 versus $33 nationally. New York pricing, by contrast, runs near or above the national high point on every component of the date.

The cities behind New York at the expensive end of the table are also high-cost-of-living markets. Washington DC, Denver, and San Francisco all exceeded $117 for the same evening, while cheaper markets clustered across the Midwest, South, and Southwest. Chicago at $87, Seattle at $89, Phoenix at $94, and Houston at $98 all sat closer to Philadelphia than to New York.

Paul Madden at Mandoe Media, the company that commissioned the research, said, “dating used to be something that happened occasionally. In the app era, for a lot of people, it’s weekly. The city you live in has quietly become a real line item in a single person’s budget, and almost nobody thinks of it that way.”

That shift in frequency changes the math substantially for New Yorkers. Pew Research Center puts the share of US adults who have ever used a dating site or app at three in ten, with usage rising sharply among younger adults. For a New Yorker going on one new first date a week through Tinder, Hinge or Bumble, the gap with Philadelphia compounds to roughly $2,400 over twelve months for the same kind of evening, in cities a two-hour train ride apart.

The backdrop is restaurant prices that have outpaced general inflation for three years running. According to USDA Economic Research Service data, food-away-from-home prices rose 3.8 percent in 2025 and 4.1 percent the year before, both above the 20-year historical average of 3.5 percent. New York daters are paying meaningfully more for the same restaurant night out than they did three or four years ago, with the city’s structural premium layered on top.

The figures in the study are also pre-tax and pre-tip. New York City’s combined sales tax sits at 8.875 percent, and a 20 percent gratuity on $122 adds another $24 before tax is applied. Together, the model’s $122 figure climbs closer to $157 in real terms, before factoring in dessert, after-dinner drinks, transportation, and the second round of drinks that often turns up on a date night. The headline figure is best read as a floor on actual first-date spend rather than a ceiling.

The most expensive single venue in the study was Strip House Speakeasy in New York, where a first date for two averaged $223. The cheapest individual restaurant in the data set was Il Borgo in San Francisco at $35, with The Palace of Indian and Seiko Japanese Restaurant in Philadelphia coming in at $36 and $37. The gap between Strip House and the cheapest venue in the ranking is $188, more than enough to fund five evenings out at the lower end of the scale.

Lon’s at The Hermosa in Phoenix came in second on the expensive list at $199, an outlier on the high end of an otherwise affordable city. New York’s pricing, by contrast, runs consistently high across the OpenTable-listed sample rather than relying on a handful of headline-grabbing venues. That structural difference is what pushes the citywide median to the top of the table.

The study used the median rather than the mean at city level, which limits the influence of a handful of outlier venues at either end. It also drew only on restaurants with complete pricing visible on OpenTable, which skews the sample toward mid-to-upper-market sit-down rooms rather than slice shops, dive bars, or counter-service spots, where most cities, including New York, have considerably cheaper drinks and food. The headline figures are best read as the cost of a booked, full-service restaurant date, not the cheapest possible night out in the city.

For New York daters, the practical takeaway is that dinner and drinks at a typical OpenTable-listed restaurant will run roughly $33 more than in Seattle, $46 more than in Philadelphia, and well above the national median across the sample. The full ranking and methodology are available via the published study.