Syracuse Sandwich: Panera Bread's Chicken Caesar Sandwich

Who: Panera Bread What: Chicken Caesar
Where: Route 11, Cicero Phone: 458-9436 Website: Panera Bread
Parking: Shared lots Accepts Credit Cards: Yes Take-Out: Yes Delivery: No

     Before you say anything about this being the 7^th, yes 7^th, review of Panera Bread please go read reviews number 5 and 6 for my defense. I’ll give you a second to go do that. …………..you done? Okay, so we stopped into Panera Bread yet again because of the convenience and our odd obsession with the place to grab some dinner. Christine ordered her usual Asiago roast beef sandwich and I think it was chili but it could have been soup. I scanned the menu for something I haven’t reviewed yet and thought the Chicken Caesar sounded pretty good so I went with that and the trusty bbq chopped chicken salad just incase the sandwich didn’t pan out. We also got a free cookie because of the new Panera rewards card that you can sign up for. I won’t go into too much detail about the card but you get free coffee and pastries from time to time which is nice.

     From the looks of the picture it looked like it was going to be a good sandwich. But I've judged a lot of books by their colors lately, something I really shouldn't do, because looks can be deceiving and they certainly were this time. The sandwich is comprised of three cheese bread, Caesar dressing, asiago cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and chicken. It seemed the ingredients would work together; the cheese bread was soft and airy, the chicken, which is the same as the chicken in my salad, held up it’s end of the bargain despite there not really being enough stuffed in there, and the red onion gave the sandwich a snap. There came an issue with the other ingredients though; the taste of asiago cheese was muted by the small piece they put on, the tomato wasn't fresh but it wouldn’t be since it is winter, the lettuce should have been mixed with the dressing before being put on or at least place up against it instead of being on the bottom of the sandwich. The killer of this whole thing was the overly herb-y taste from the Caesar dressing. Caesar dressing is without a doubt my favorite dressing and I don’t know of Panera’s always taste like this but I was not impressed. With each bite all I could really taste was herb-y dressing and it took half an iced tea and a bbq salad to get that taste out of my mouth. I feel that this sandwich could be better but it fell apart in the matter of execution.

Rating: Satisfying – It wasn’t all bad but defiantly not all good.