Saint Louis Bread Co.

St. Louis Bread Company (Panera)
Location: Des Peres, Missouri
Time: Easter Sunday, 08 April 2007 1:00 pm
Company: Jim and Hilary

My Rating
Ambience: %%%%
Menu: %%%
Food: %%
Service: %%
Price: %%%%
Logistics: %%%
Overall: %%%

Jim got the Bacon Turkey Bravo and enjoyed it very much. I ordered the “Pick Two” combo with a cup of Broccoli Cheese Soup and half of a Turkey Artichoke Panini. I love their broccoli cheese soup. It’s not too thick, and has nice, definable chunks of broccoli and slivers of carrot. The broccoli and carrot have a great bite to them, not mushy.

I wasn’t able to eat the panini, however. I took one bite and tasted red peppers. Oh the horror! I was confused because I read on the menu board what the sandwich consisted of and it said nothing about peppers. It reads, “Smoked turkey, spinach artichoke spread, Asiago-Parmesan cheese, tomatoes & caramelized onions, grilled hot on our Basil Pesto Focaccia.” When I investigated (by peering under the top layer of bread on my sandwich) it appeared that the peppers were part of the spinach artichoke spread. According to the Panera website, it contains jalapeño peppers and sweet bell peppers. I did some looking online and found very few recipes for spinach artichoke dip or spread that contained peppers of any kind. Very disappointing.

My dislike of peppers is so strong that I had to abandon my half a sandwich and ordered a simple Ham and Swiss to share with my sister. The reason she was willing to eat the other half is because she ordered soup that she didn’t like. She got the Chicken Noodle Soup, which she had had before, but for some reason wasn’t as good yesterday. She said the noodles were really soggy and they looked that way to me also. So between my half sandwich and her soup, we had probably $6 in uneaten food.

Oh well. It was still an enjoyable experience. I now know not to order spinach artichoke spread at the Bread Company. I rated the service as I did because the guy who was handing off the food just plopped it down on the counter without saying a word to me or even looking at me. He was deep in conversation with someone behind the counter at the time.