Panera Bread Review

      For some reason, Seven Days, doesn't publish reviews for Panera Bread. I guess for the same reason they don't review McDonald's or Burger King. And while Panera is a chain like those others, I think the food is much better than your usual fast or casual food stop. So anyway here is my review.

      On this particular Saturday we were bored and decided to go to a wine tasting at our favorite wine store in the whole wide world, Dedalus, on the waterfront. Since we were going to be partaking of some rather yummy Austrian wines, we decided to go to Church Street for some lunch first. My first choice was the new taco place, but as we were walking through the mall we noticed Panera Bread. Having eaten at a couple of these in the past, we decided to try this instead.

      Panera is set up like most fast food joints, you order your food at a counter, picking from the menus posted overhead and then they bring your food to your table by locating you on a pager style beeper, (which wasn't working on this particular day, so the servers were having to shout while walking through the very large space). The problem with this is in the Burlington location, there is ALOT of traffic going through the same space as the line snakes through, and the lines can be HUGE. So this creates bottlenecks and confusion, in addition for people not familiar with the menu, (us for instance), you are walking past the bakery, looking up trying to read the menu, trying to find the correct line and trying not to bump into everyone coming and going . PHEW, alot of work involved in just getting your food.

     As you are looking for the correct line to lineup in, pay attention to the bakery you are walking by, it will come back to you in a bit. Fortunately, the place was packed so we had a bit of a wait in line. this gave us time to study the menu.When it was our turn to order, I went with the chipotle chicken panini and wifey went with the salmon Mediterranean salad. Now for my mistake, I was offered any item from the bakery for $.99 but since I had not paid attention to the bakery, I passed. My wife on the other hand spotted a strawberries and cream scone and got one of those . DUH, what a dunce I was, as the normal pricing for bakery items appears to be $2.99 AND on top of that the scone was DELICIOUS.

      Once you place your order, you now have the joy of finding a place to sit. It appears that Panera is a BIG hit with the downtown Burlington crowd. Of course, by offering free wi-fi you are guaranteed to have the laptop squatters taking up valuable table space for hours and hours at a time. I think after 45 minutes, Panera should be able to bring over a mini parking meter and if you don't constantly feed it quarters, out you go. ANYWAYS, we were lucky as we walked around the serving counter, boom a table magically opened up for us. As the wife sat down, I went off to look for the soda fountain, tucked wayyyy in the back, to get her soda. For some strange reason ,the lemonade is served behind the counter? Is lemonade really that much more expensive that you don't want to put it with the soda and coffee pots? So after delivering the soda, back up to the counter to get my now ready lemonade, weird way to do things.

       So how did all this taste once we finally got settled in and our food came to us? First, lets start with the scone. We ate this while we were waiting and it was delicious. Not at all dry and crumbly like a typical scone but rather soft and cake like with great flavors. In a REALLY quick manner our meals arrived;

      The food was very good,  my chicken sandwich was packed with meat and had the perfect amount of heat from the chipotle and smokiness from the bacon. As you can see wife's salad was HUGE, although I am not a big fan of cold salmon and to me it tasted a bit fishy. But the wife loved it and ate every drop. For $23.70, this place is a very good value for downtown Burlington. We left full and happy. And before I get nasty comments, I KNOW it's not local and I KNOW they truck in their food from all over the country and I KNOW they don't make everything fresh in house. But still, if you have to visit a fast/casual food place you could do ALOT worse.

On a scale of 1 to 5;

Food,                Quality means much more to us than quantity.
Beer and Wine,  Based on selection and pricing

Service,             Speaks for itself
Ambiance,          Does the look fit the food and pricing

 Price,                And finally does the pricing equal the results we had.

Food,                     3.5  Very good food. With a very good variety, providing you want sandwiches or salads.
Beer and Wine,    NO  No beer and wine so no rating.
Service,                 2.5   Counter service only and it will be assumed you have been here before.

Ambiance,             3.0   Nice space but CROWDED. Be prepared to fight for a table.
Price,                     4.0   Very reasonable for downtown Burlington.

Overall,                 3.25  I am not a very big fan of the whole fast/casual food chains, but I must say this is

one of the better ones out there. If your in a hurry or just want something quick, you could do MUCH worse than this one. 

A tale of two reviews

      My organizational skills were called into question, when I realized I had bought tickets for two events at the Flynn on consecutive week nights. WHOOPS. Fortunately, the dear wife got the nights off and I just decided to go without sleep for a couple nights. These type of event reviews (concerts, plays, musicals), always seemed silly to me. Your read about them in your local paper the day after the event and basically the reviewer is saying NAH NAH I went and you didn't. But in these days of cyberspace technology, hopefully the review you read from Burlington, may reach you before the event comes to your town, and help you make a informed decision. Or if not, NAH NAH I went and you didn't .

      The first event was a Broadway musical called "In the Heights". The winner of the 2008 Tony for Best Musical, this is a tale too often playing out in real life. A former Irish ghetto has been recolonized by a Latino community, consisting of generations of people from the Dominican Republic, Cuba and Puerto Rico, and their little barrio is now threatened by real estate developers, yuppies and hipsters, moving in and driving up rents and driving out the people that made this community thrive. Tell me you haven't heard this story in every major and not so major city in the U.S.

      What makes this musical so enjoyable is not just that the story is topical and current, but that the music and dancing is so vibrant. A mix of Salsa, Latino, hip hop and rap, the music carries the story along from beginning to end. And the choreography and costuming is incredible. The only problem we encountered, and this is not the first time this has happened at the Flynn, is the music drowned out the lyrics in several place. The band was a live band and was a great Latin orchestra. But in a musical that depends so much on the song lyrics to keep you informed, missing those lyrics takes away from the experience. As I said, this is something we have run into before at the Flynn and you would think that with their years of experience they could get the sound mix just perfect.

      I really though this was an incredible musical and highly recommend it to you if the touring company is coming to your town, A+, appropriate for all ages.

      On our 2nd night out we had tickets to see Lucinda Williams. Arguably, one of the greatest living singer songwriters around.  I have loved her music for years and years and got to see her once at the Ottawa Blues Festival , along with 10,000 other fans, so I was looking forward to seeing her in the intimate confines of the Flynn. A rather sparse crowd turned out but you could tell from the start we were all great fans. Her backing group also turned out to be the warm up. Buick 6 started the night about 15-20 minutes late and played a totally instrumental set of mainly alternative versions of Lucinda Williams songs. Not a bad warm-up but I would of liked to hear some of their own music.

      After a short intermission, Lucinda came out. The first thing you notice is she seems to need some help. There is a person around her after every song, handing her a drink, helping her with her guitar, etc. The second thing you see is a small music stand next to her mike, with all her songs and lyrics on it. Very strange and a bit disturbing as there seems to be no explanation for it on the Internet. But the the music starts, and all is forgotten. She has a voice like no other and with this back up band really is exploring her rock/grunge side. And she certainly give you your moneys worth. She played an incredible 22 song set, with songs both familiar (to fans) like Drunken Angel  and Change the locks, to covers, Allman Brother's Cross to Bear and an incredible version of Dylan's Trying to get to heaven, to brand new stuff not even recorded yet. A real experience for hard core Lucinda fans.

       For those of you not real hardcore fans, this may be a hard set to sit through. Lucinda has never been about happy, happy, joy, joy. Alot of songs are dark, her main subjects being lost love, unrequited love or abusive love. But for those of you who love original, American music, do yourself a favor and go see Lucinda when she comes to your town. For me this was one of the best concert experiences ever. Another A+ night at the Flynn. Oh and the sound problems of the previous night, not in existence tonight, the sound was incredible.