Ha! I kept thinking I should look that up, and sure enough their awesome Cream of Chicken & Wild Rice soup is ghastly ungood for you. No wonder I liked it. And, damn, trans-fats, even. 
I will say that, having traveled around a bit, the Panera places are pretty hit-or-miss as to quality. St. Louis Bread Co., however, is usually reliably good.
Personal rule: any soup with “cream” in the name is probably a fat/calorie bomb and should be avoided (in general)
We buy the baker’s dozen of bagels: cinnamon crunch, chocolate chip, and the sadly discontinued cranberry ones from October, and they feed our teenagers and us with lip-smacking goodness for days.
Has anybody else tried one of the Atlanta Bread Company restaurants? Similar in type of food and price as Panera. Better quality of bread in the Atlanta Bread Company though.
My experience: the farther away from Cleveland you get, the less reliable the Panera is quality-wise. When I lived in Ohio, Paneras were awesome. I would regularly buy two cinnamon crunch and two asiago cheese bagels. Sun-dried tomato cream cheese went with the latter. That made for tasty mealy snacky eating times for about three days.
Artichoke Turkey Panini is heavenly, too. And when they have their pear and gorgonzola chicken salad, omg.
But now that I live near to Charlotte, the quality of food I get at them is more hit-or-miss. I don’t make it a habit to eat the salads or the paninis anymore. 
This has me convinced that I have the best Panera Bread around. It is in a parking lot with a lot of businesses and is set in such a way as to make it easy to get in and out of. It has a lot of parking spaces, too.
My Panera Bread rocks; perhaps it rolls.
In addition to the online nutritional info, every Panera I’ve been in has had a pamphlet or notebook with nutritional information AND INGREDIENTS that you can peruse before ordering. (Just, please, stand aside and let other people order while you look.) Believe it or not, armed with The Official Notebook and a very helpful crew, I’m able to take my gluten (wheat, rye, barley) intolerant daughter to Panera for lunch!
Ah, yes, I recall my first trip to the St. Louis Bread Company on Main Street in St. Charles. This was soon after I went vegetarian, a move which torqued my family something fierce. In a move symbolic of his accceptance, my brother took me there because they had veggie sandwiches. That was nice of him.
I like their cream of tomato soup and their coffee. I find their pastries a little too sweet and heavy.
Yup, they’re in the “fast casual” category. Other big chains that fall into that category include Chipotle and Boston Market. You’ve got the description right: food quality and price are usually a bit higher than a “quick service” restaurant (industry-speak for what the layman would call “fast food”), but there’s no table service.
See my fav. would be a you pick two: chicken-bacon panini and a bowl of broccoli cheddar. A delicious meal, but suprisingly filling.
I think this might be a bad sign because I’m a young guy with a pretty healthy appetite. I don’t see how a little sandwich and soup like this should fill me up but it does.
Anyone know why, perhaps the fats or sodium they put into it?
I’ve seen Cosi in downtown Chicago, and the whole design of the chain indicates that I’m not welcome. It’s the least friendly looking food place I’ve ever seen. Just looking at the windows, nothing about it says “come in and eat” or even indicates that they have food. It looks like a high-end shoe store - the kind that has no shoes in display; you enter and a sales person evaluates whether or not you are worthy of buying their shoes. If you pass, they’ll go back and bring out a pair of shoes for you to look at. That’s the vibe I get from Cosi. They could be serving manna from heaven for free, and I’d never know if from their hateful storefront.
Oh, come now. How could a restaurant with a website featuring three distinct shades of baby poo green not seem appetizing? 
This boggles. Your Panera must be entirely different from mine or our digestive systems are configured differently. I can’t grasp how one might feel that a 1/2 sandwich and a 1/2 salad are more filling than a QPC and Medium Fries. Meat, potatoes and grease always wins that battle.
Maybe I’m a minority, but greasy, empty calories always leave a nagging hunger pang of unfulfillment, where as even a smaller meal made with quality ingredients (and veggies to boot) always makes me feel fuller. Plus, just logically, with the Panera meal I have bread on the sandwich, croutons, and a baguette. That’s a lot of bread to not feel full from. Plus turkey, artichokes, cheese, other stuff, and a salad (the half salad is not really small- it’s probably an actual serving, not a restaurant ‘serving’).
As a Kosher-observant Jew, I can’t comment on their food (though it all looked and smelled delicious), but I can at least praise the friendliness of their staff. Once on the road I needed a wi-fi connection, and I camped there all day buying nothing but coffee, and no one indicated any problem with it.
IMO, it’s a better feeling of ‘full.’ McD’s leaves me feeling stuffed and bloated, while the food from Panera is more satisfying.
The only thing I eat from there is the black bean soup, which is usually delish. They also make the best bread and chocolate chip cookies. What I dread about going there is waiting behind all the schmucks that can’t make up their mind or the geniuses that need a seminar from the cashier to place their order.Not really the restaurant’s fault;apparently their extensive menu is too much for the average bear. But what really turns me off and keeps me from going there more often is the way it smells; all the cheeses and salad dressings, neither of which I eat, combined with the dirty dishes stacked up by the trash cans can really put me off. If I can catch them before the rush and get my yummy soup and bread to go I am a full bellied, happy camper though.
I don’t want to bad mouth a generally fine restaurant but we must be eating in very different Paneras. Other than the good bread they use, their sandwiches always remind me of something my mom put in a plastic bag for me when I was a kid. Two pieces of bread with some sort of spread and a little meat and cheese is what I get. A fine example of mom’s sandwich true, but nothing to get excited about. The hunk of baguette on the other hand, I could just gnaw on one of those all day long and ignore the sandwich.
Are you comparing them to deli sandwiches that are stuffed with a half pound of meat? Don’t get me wrong, I like good deli, but I think they give you enough filling for about two or three sandwiches/meals.
I hear that! I don’t know if you’re woman-folk or not, but a “good deli sandwich” is MAN FOOD, damn it. I couldn’t eat one in a single sitting if my life depended on it. There’s like 1.5 lbs of meat, plus the trimmings. I would make a sandwich 1/3 of the size at home.