Location: 708 Haywood Road, Greenville SC
Items Ordered: Chicken Bacon Rancher w/Chips
Hello from the ice storm! I hope you’re doing okay and that you’re safe. The day before the ice storm, I grabbed myself some Panera on a friend’s treat. I’ve heard it compared to hospital food before. Are they right? Or is it much better than hospital food? I’ll answer that at the end. First, the decor was very nice for a chain restaurant. A lot of fast food or fast food adjacent places are going for a slightly modernist interior that I don’t think inspires much. Panera at least looks lively. It still has modernist design pieces seen throughout, but it manages to look superior to other places. The price for the sandwich and chips and drink was $12.73.
The sandwich itself could be described more as a Rancher Chicken Bacon than a Chicken Bacon Rancher. It was pretty sopping wet with ranch. I didn’t order extra ranch, and frankly I’m very scared for what extra ranch looks like. The bacon almost got overridden by ranch, and that feels almost strange to say. It would be a well-balanced sandwich without so much ranch, I believe. It’s hard to mess up the basics on combining chicken, bacon, cheese and ranch after all.
The chips were simple. Small, salty, pretty nice. Not much to say on them, they’re simple kettle chips.
For $12.73 these days… the sandwich was fine. But I wouldn’t go for this as a lunch meal. $12.73 for a lunch is quite high. $12.73 for a decent enough dinner sandwich is more palatable. I just wish the chips had more to them. The sandwich itself isn’t far off what you might get at another fast food chain, but you can get cheaper meals for less at say, Burger King or McDonald’s. But then again, this sandwich was far better than a lot I’ve had at McDonald’s, even with the excessive ranch.
But let’s answer that question from earlier. Is Panera comparable to hospital food? Is it so low quality we’d feed it in a cafeteria?
I couldn’t tell you, I’ve never been in a hospital.
The Big Food Blog 
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