Panera's Thanksgiving Offering

This week we saw that Panera had a new offering for the fall - the roasted turkey and cranberry panini.  I haven't been able to make any progress on my Thanksgiving Sandwich Project this year due to periodontal surgery, and thought that this would be the perfect way to get back into holiday sandwiches.  We were excited to see how this would measure up against other Thanksgiving or holiday sandwiches we've tried.

I got the Pick Two combination with the panini and mac and cheese, both of which are signature or premium signature items and therefore cost more in the combo.  A got the same panini in his Pick Two but got french onion soup instead of mac and cheese (much healthier!).

The roasted turkey and cranberry panini, according to Panera's menu sign, consists of slices of roasted turkey, garlic and herb cheese spread, zesty cranberry mostarda and fresh spinach on freshly baked artisan ciabatta.

What an incredibly disappointing sandwich.  I love Thanksgiving sandwiches and sure, this one didn't have stuffing, but I still expected that it would be tasty.  A didn't love it either and we both had buyer's remorse.

What was wrong with it?

First, it was tiny.  A's piece of panini was larger than mine, but still not a very generous size.  It also didn't have that much food in it, especially compared to my mom's Frontega chicken.

Second, neither of us had any of that garlic and herb cheese spread.  Maybe they forgot to put it on, or maybe it just had no flavor.  I looked carefully at the bread halfway through eating but didn't see it spread on anywhere.

Third, the turkey and spinach barely had any flavor.  All you could taste was a little bit of cranberry in places where there was a lot of cranberry sauce but mostly it was just bread.  And it's not like the old Panera paninis where they had good bread (man, we miss that asiago bread for the paninis), it's just boring ciabatta.  

I dipped my sandwich in the salad dressing from the Thai chicken salad and it tasted so much better.

I don't think we'll be getting this sandwich again and it's currently our least favorite Thanksgiving/holiday sandwich.  Definitely not worth it as a signature item.