So I decided to get a sandwich from Panera for lunch. Usually they have pretty good soups and sandwiches. I check the menu and see that they have a Cubano, in my opinion one of the all time greats. I know that they have several pressed sandwiches so they should be able to handle it. I order online and go to get my food. I open the sandwich to find it is falling apart. There is cheese but it is not deliciously melted sticking the sandwich together. The top piece of bread is fluffy and falling off instead of pressed. Nevertheless I squeeze the sandwich together and take a bite only to get a mouthful of candy-sweet filling. Now the sweetness of the pork should contrast with the spiciness of the mustard and the sourness of the pickles but there is scant mustard to be found and the pickles are sweet bread and butter pickles. It is pretty much inedible. Surely this sandwich doesn’t call for sweet pickles? I google recipes and find only one out of dozens that calls for sweet pickles ( I’m looking at you Tyler Florence). Maybe I’m wrong but I think dill or sour pickles are a must in this sandwich. Total fail, Panera.
And while we are on the subject, am I the only one who finds their online ordering process odd? You place your order, and they leave the bag on a shelf for you to pick up. In the past I have had other people grab my food for me if they are going to be in the area. Basically, anyone could walk into a Panera, go up to the pickup shelf, and walk off with a random order. Just check the labels, find one that looks tasty and walk out the door. Nobody is checking ID. Nobody knows whether you were the one who paid for the food. It is entirely on the honor system and while I would never do that, I have no faith in my fellow humans. If I were homeless and hungry I could totally see it as a way to get free food.
Anyway, while I haven’t completely sworn off Panera, I will NOT rely on them for a Cubano fix ever again.
Far more surprising would be if Panera, or any nationally advertised, mass-market food chain, could make an acceptable Cuban sandwich. Or gyros. Or hot dog. Or Reuben.
There’s a minimum threshold for quality on these kinds of delicacies that the big guys just can’t guarantee.
Weak food. Weak service. People tell me they like the soups. Not my kind of place.
Their commercials make me sick. I’d never go there, even if there was one within 100 miles.
And you can’t get just a BLT or the like. Everything is too chi-chi.
Dennis
I walked into a café and asked for the Rueben.
“What kind of bread-white, wheat or sourdough?”
“What kind of meat-beef, pork and chicken?”
“Would you want that with or without sauerkraut?”
I walk out of a café.
you know what always annoyed me about Panera is its hypocrisy… they talk about eating clean and good and all that hippy feel-good crap
But they fail to mention that they sell or at least used to sell things like a brownie that was so big had so much sweetened raspberry filling in it … that even the server told me the best way to eat it was to half it or cut it into fourths… and there were other such things on its “bakery” side
My brother worked there for years and said everyone came in for the healthy items then would blow it on the deserts … or they’d go over the menu and rationalize it by saying “well lunch was healthy so i can have big as a tea saucer cookie”
There’s actually a lot of things on Panera’s menu that are eye-poppingly caloric. It’s pretty easy to get a lunch there that’s a day’s worth of calories if you aren’t careful.
I feel the same way about Trader Joes. I know they have some healthy stuff but the majority of what I see screams junk food central to me.
I saw Cuban sandwiches on the Panera menu and I was thinking about ordering one. So the OP has saved me from that mistake.
My Panera screw-up story? I ordered a chai tea latte. The person behind the counter was apparently confused by the concept. She made a regular coffee latte and then added chai tea to it.
I was pretty certain this was going to be about finding a bone in your chicken sandwich.
You lose points for lack of creativity.
Here’s your problem. 
Panera is one of those places that sounds great when it’s described to you but is always disappointing when you actually have their food in front of you. I’ve never not been disappointed at Panera.
They’re absurdly overpriced. I can buy the “fixings” and make any number of different and delicious sandwiches with very little effort for a fraction of the cost, and I know they’ll be made exactly the way I like them. In fact, I’m quite sure the effort of going there and waiting in line is more time consuming than actually making them myself. I can’t help but view people who buy their lunch every single day as either completely inept at food prep or absurdly lazy.
I don’t think Trader Joe’s really advertises itself as a health food store though.
Or maybe they just want variety and it’s not cost-effective in their situation to make their own. I’ll go with the Panera menu. Let’s say I’m packing lunch only for myself- and want a BBQ chicken flatbread sandwich Monday, a roasted turkey, cheddar and apple sandwich Tuesday, a Napa chicken salad sandwich on Wed, steak and argula Thursday and a Cuban sandwich Friday. That’s five different kinds of bread, and where I live, you can’t buy a single flatbread or two slices of sourdough bread. So I will be buying five loaves/bags of bread to make 5 sandwiches.Same thing with the other ingredients - I can’t buy just enough arugula and steak for the steak and arugula sandwich or just enough of the various cheeses to make a single sandwich. I’d have to buy more than a single sandwich worth of four or five different cheeses and so on. Sure , it’s cheaper to pack your own sandwiches under some conditions - but it’s not cheaper if I buy six flatbreads and throw five away because I only want one sandwich on a flat bread, or I buy a 1/4 lb of turkey and throw half away. It will probably be a little cheaper than what I would spend at Panera, but not that much.
I have numerous complaints about Panera (feel free to subscribe to my grumpy old man newsletter) but their ordering system isn’t one of them. Seems like a pretty popular way to do it nowadays… Presumably Starbucks paved the way with their mobile ordering pickup area but they have it in Chipotle, too-- and I guess here’s one area where the honor system must work ok more often than not. You’d think there’d be more theft but I’ve never personally experienced it and I order ahead fairly often.
I usually only go to Panera as something of a low key treat for myself. The habit started when I worked at an office that (barely) had one within walking distance. So if my day was bad enough that I needed to take a walk, I would end up there.
Could I buy the ingredients and make the same things at home? Maybe. I’m not a bad cook. I don’t think it makes me lazy or inept to want a bit of a break from either prepping/assembling a variety of food stuffs or cooking. It’s not an everyday occurrence for me, but even if it were, who cares?
I’d be sorely disappointed if I got a cubano as was described in the OP.
Yeah. I didn’t have to read past the second sentence to know how this story was going to turn out.
Not to mention you also dealing with the choice to get up & go out extra early to get sandwich ingredients or get them the night before, in which case you’re already dealing with day-old bread.
There are way too many ingreds. At these sandwich places. I’m a simple girl with simple tastes. Corndogs! Yay!!