Panera Bread®

"Do not go where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (the original "Where's Waldo?", by the way)

http://www.panerabread.com/

(There really is no connection between today's EweToob link and either "bread" or "Ralph Waldo", I just like it.)


For my birthday last month, I received a gift certificate card to Panera[1] Bread® from my sister Sharon (Thanks, Sharon!). There is just one local San Francisco location. I like that they open up bright and early every morning at 7:00am; this always makes it easy for me to drive over there and find a legal parking spot. I have eaten there a few times in the past for lunch or dinner before San Francisco Giants (your 2012 World Champions) games as they are just a block away from AT&T Park on the corner of 4th and King Streets. Now you can call this area of town either "SoMa" or "Mission Bay" ~ take your pick, they are both stupid names for a neighborhood if you ask me (even if you don't ask me, they are still stupid names).

Panera Bread® doesn't really offer that many true breakfastary items. Of course, they have a great selection of baked goods, but they do have have four different Baked Egg Soufflés[2] and ten types of Breakfast Sandwiches. I went with the Spinach & Artichoke Baked Egg Soufflé ~ "Spinach, Romano cheese, red peppers and artichoke hearts, lightly flavored with a hint of garlic & a dash of Tabasco®". As they don't have any potato-ey side dishes, I also got an Apple Crunch Muffin ~ "A sweet muffin, filled with chunks of apple and cinnamon (well, the cinnamon was actually the powered type, not chunky) then finished with our cinnamon and sugar topping“. I also got a cuppa their Dark Roast coffee (they have four different roasts/blend from which to choose).

I liked the soufflé thingy, and it had two of my favourite ingredients in it. It's not something that I normally have for breakfast. I don't think I have ever had too many in my life and it's not something that I would even attempt to make if I did cook (or bake). There was lots of (powdered) cinnamon and apple chunks in the muffin. The coffee was pretty good and the refills were free. I suppose that I could have waited and gotten a cuppa at Philz™, which is just a block away, but the coffee was "free" with the gift certificate, after all.

Even though there was already a "dash of Tabasco®" in the soufflé, I added some of my own Serious Food… Silly Prices Mango Hot Sauce (Thanks, Cindy & Greg!) to it; I left the muffin as it was and unfettered, though.

The best part is that I still have plenty left over on the gift card to get about two more meals out of it… now if Sharon had just sent me some tickets to a Giants game, too.


Glen Bacon Scale Rating: Spinach & Artichoke Soufflé ~ 6.0; Apple Crunch Muffin ~ 6.3


1. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer del día, número uno:

The word "panera" in Spanish means "breadbasket". I have no idea what they call "below the belt" in Spanish, though.

2. Stupid, useless cunning linguist pointer du jour, numéro deux:

"Soufflé" is the noun use of the past participle of the French verb "souffler", which means "to blow" or "to puff", it comes from Latin "sufflāre" meaning "to breathe on" or "to blow on".