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Panera Bakery-Café

By: The Lady of The Night Out

Why should you eat at Panera?

When I was a new mother, suddenly at home and not at work, I started baking my own whole wheat bread. I’d put Austin in his car seat on the kitchen table and knead the dough myself (there were no bread machines in those days.) Then I’d put the dough and the car seat on top of the dryer. The rumbling lulled the baby to sleep and the heat helped the dough rise. I’d take a nap.

Since then I’ve been hooked on homemade breads. Now I only purchase bread at a grocery store at gun-point. That’s why I’m really glad Panera Bakery-Café finally made it to LVNV. Panera bakes all its breads daily. This place has a special oven – the only one in LVNV -- that injects steam at the right moment to make sure the crusts are correctly crunchy.

Who should eat at Panera?

Bread lovers. LVNV has some great cake bakeries, but only Great Buns does bread well. But it only sells a few varieties. Panera specializes in 17 different kinds of breads. You can select any of them for your sandwich. Hey, this place bakes its own asiago cheese croutons!
Sourdough fanatics. Panera guards its sourdough starter like it was the Hope diamond. It gets fed flour, salt, and water at 10 p.m. every night. You can have your sourdough in loafs, baguettes, rolls, even bread bowls. And this is the real thing, so it’s sour without the sting.
Sandwich aficionados. From the traditional (like turkey) to the far-out (the bacon turkey bravo), the sandwiches are terrific. Panera bakes miches, a super-sized loaf. The huge slices from a miche hold lots more goodies between the lines.
Do-Gooders. At the end of the day, Panera makes a “dough-nation” of all its unsold bread to the Salvation Army. We should support a restaurant built on goodness not greed.
People who hate to tip. No one at Panera accepts tips. If you leave one, it becomes a “dough-nation.”
Diners on special diets. Want to know exactly what you’re eating? Panera has a notebook which lists every ingredient in each menu item. If you’re allegoric to say peanut butter, you’ll know what items to avoid.
Families. Panera has a dynamite peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Most kids have it on French bread. The $3.29 offering comes with chips and a choice of a soft drink or cold milk.
People Watching their Waistlines. Panera bakes wonderful pastries. It bakes some of its Danishes without icing to keep the sugar content to a minimum. And the turkey is 99 percent fat free and the ham not far behind at 96 percent.
Shoppers. Forget the food court at the mall. The food is much better here.
Folks on a Budget. Most of the offerings cost $5.99. And the sandwiches are big!
Vegetarians. The restaurant has many vegan offerings and is committed to meatless dining.

Who shouldn’t eat at Panera?

The pampered. Panera is the first restaurant in the chain to have wait staff bring the food to your table. But you do have to go through the line to order.
Atkins dieters. Alas. Alack. Alay. Bread is verboten on the Atkins plan. Panera will gladly prepare its sandwiches sans bread, but this is not a realistic option. Trust me, the temptation is too great.
Folks from Summerlin. It’s a long haul to Henderson. But don’t worry – the west side gets the next two Paneras – at Fort Apache and Trop in the new Wal-mart Center and on Charleston in Summerlin.

Ok, so what’s the food like? The Big O Award goes to the Bacon Turkey Bravo. You can taste the wisps of smoke in both the juicy turkey breast and the bacon strips. An over-the-top addition: smoked gouda cheese. This Dutch delight is an insistent loud mouth. Three strong tastes make a very compelling sandwich statement. Yum for me but this one’s not for the feint of heart. I had mine on tomato basil bread.

A lighter offering is the turkey fresco sandwich. Here, the turkey keeps company with circles of cucumbers in a creamy cucumber dressing. The cool, refreshing taste of the cukes makes this a sensible summertime offering. I had mine on ciabatta bread.

As a card-carrying carnivore, I can’t believe the veggie sandwich bowled me over. A garden basket of ingredients – were wedged between two slices of ciabatta bread. In addition to the expected cucumbers, tomatoes and red onions, this sandwich features a mix of roasted peppers that included peppers both sweet and hot. The war of the worlds was delicious. The veggies are painted with a cooling blue cheese dressing. What a great offering!

The Asian sesame seed chicken salad is another great summer meal. The restaurant is very generous with the very juicy chunks of white meat. Sesame seeds and fresh cilantro add their distinctive voices. Wonton strips give the salad some sound – they crackle as you chew. I loved the sesame vinaigrette – very sweet and very Asian.

If you think mozzarella comes in those non-descript yellow squares you buy at the grocery store, you’ve never tasted the real thing. Do yourself a flavor and order the fresh mozzarella and tomato salad. Snow white balls of mozzarella have a subtle, sophisticated, snowy flavor. Contrast it with ripe, fire engine red tomatoes full of taste and acidic spunk. A balsamic vinaigrette and a flurry of rosemary tie the two contenders together.

A hunk of rosemary focaccia bread –chewy, fluffy, yet dense accompanies this salad. Sprigs of rosemary are baked into the crust for an intense flavor injection.

The Greek salad has all the usual suspects, including the wonderfully sharp and crumbly feta cheese and the pungent kalamata olives. Panera’s version has a scorching surprise: peperoncini peppers. Smokin’.

I don’t like cream soup because they are so heavy, but I’m sold on Panera’s broccoli cheese soup, its best selling soup. It’s a marriage of a stout American cheese and thick chunks of broccoli; what a wonderful duet of flavors. The cream is softly singing in the background, not hogging the microphone.

I also loved the French onion soup. The roof of asiago cheese injected a sharp, cheesiness into the dense, beefy broth. This soup was so thick with onions you could have eaten it with a fork.

I also adored the chicken with wild rice soup. Like its cousin, the French onion, this soup was as thick as gravy. The wild rice flavor clearly took charge. The chicken slices were wedges of juicy meat. Carrots gave this creamy soup some crunch.

Panera bakes all its Panini sandwiches in an oven for 45 minutes at 120 degrees so all the flavors melt into one. The Frontega chicken panini features white meat that was pulled, not cut, from the breast, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil. Then its slathered with chipotle mayonnaise for an added kick. The grilling fuses the flavors.

Today in LVNV, kalamata olive bread is the dernier cri – the latest food fashion. I can’t stand olive bread…until I sampled Panera’s version. Here the olive taste is understated, even though the bakery uses large olive chunks. Olive oil is the luscious flavor. Ditto for another bread du jour: three cheese. Panera uses asiago, romano and parmesan to create the best crust in town.

Dessert in the desert: Panera is the place for sweets. My fav: the cobblestone muffin. The name is apt because that’s what it looks like. Panera takes its own cinnamon raisin bread and mixes it with a tart apple filling. Then it tops this muffin with streusel icing. What a great mix of fruity flavors!

You have to try the miniature Bundt cakes, especially if you liked the movie, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” I liked the carrot lemon poppy seed. The earthiness of the poppy seeds contrasts sharply with the citric lemon to make a delicious sweet cake.

History: There are 505 Panera Bakery-Cafes in 30 states. The Henderson store is the first in Nevada.

The last word: Panera is definitely a bread winner. Since it’s a working bakery, all the breads and sweets are home-made, and it shows. These great breads become magical sandwiches. Eat a meal, then leave with a loaf!

Where is it? The first Panera opened at the Galleria Mall Pavilion. Get yourself to Sunset in Henderson and at the light, turn away from the towering Sunset Station marquee. The restaurant is on your right. The street address is 605 Mall Ring Circle. Phone: 702.434.4002. There will be four other Panera Bakeries opening in the next 18 months.

Web address: http://www.paneralasvegas.com.

By: The Culinary Curmudgeon Lady of the Night Out

Ocean’s 11 is a great movie about a casino heist. Imagine all that planning to steal something as pedestrian as cash. I’ve found something much more valuable to filch: dough. Well, it’s a different kind of dough. It’s the sourdough starter at Panera Bakery-Café. This hunk of beige dough has been making spectacular sourdough bread for the company since 1978. Feeding time is 10 p.m. so you could send in the gang soon after. All you need to swipe is a couple of handfuls to bake this marvelous bread at home!

Speaking of feeding time, I got a rise watching the bakers feed the mother flour, water, and salt. It’s more fun than watching the Flamingo’s penguins gobble their breakfast. The sourdough bubbles and gurgles like Old Faithful, in case you kneaded to know.

If you believe coffee and a Danish is a nutritious morning meal, Panera’s the place for your diurnal repast. In addition to serving good coffee that’s not burned (are you listening, Starbucks?), the bakery has the gooiest pecan rolls in the Valley.

Take the breads home if you are Catholic or Mormon. Baked fresh daily is wonderful when the loaves come out of the oven. However, having no preservations is a problem if you’re not feeding six hungry mouths. My two-person household could barely get through half a loaf before the bread was hard as rock. Since I’m hooked on Panera’s bread, I now run one of Clark County’s largest bird sanctuaries.

I guess I’ll have to use my own dough to purchase that special oven Panera uses. It’s got a stone floor, but that’s not what turned me on. I love the idea that it injects steam at just the right moment to make the crusts hard and tan. I wonder if the company could retrofit my sauna.

I can afford it since I don’t have to leave a tip at Panera. This is the only restaurant in town that discourages gratuities. What an enlightened idea! Now I can enjoy a meal without math anxiety.

P.S. Why did I decide to start my Atkins diet the week before Panera opened its doors?

Aired 27 June 2003

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