I Tried Every Soup From Panera Bread And Ranked Them Worst To Best

By virtue of being such a bread-focused company with a huge variety of sandwiches, Panera never screamed "café." It honestly didn't occur to me that it might have good soups and other items, as I've only been in for a sandwich, and then only a few times. Not that many fast food restaurants even offer soup, after all. So to discover that the chain has an entire soup lineup, which you can even get in bread bowls, was a surprise.

It was a treat, therefore, to get to taste eight Panera Bread soups, all of which were new to me and my family — the usual taste test crew of husband, small girl, and small boy. For the most part, we were pretty pleased with said lineup. Although none of the soups on this list can compete with a made-from-scratch version, they were perfectly adequate for a filling lunch on a chilly fall day, with only a few exceptions in quality. Without further ado, here is our rundown of Panera Bread soup, ranked worst to best.

Soup is one of Panera Bread's better-kept secrets, and in many cases, that's a shame. In the case of its autumn squash soup, it is not. This one should be kept secret forever ... so secret that the chain simply, and immediately, stop making it.

Which is to say, this item ranked worst for a reason: It was much too sweet. While the butternut flavor was nice enough, and the spice profile was decently close to what I might use at home with notes of cinnamon, apple, and curry, the similarities ended there. My soup — and that of any decent restaurant squash soup — maintains its savory, buttery roots, whereas this version smacked overpoweringly of the honey with which it is sweetened. In this home cook's opinion, you shouldn't need honey if you've made squash soup correctly because the onions, apples, spices, and butter all conspire to make it sweet already, and that's ignoring the natural sugariness of squash itself.

The pepitas, however, were very good. Sprinkled on top, they lent a much-needed umami flavor to the whole affair. I will also say that the small boy (who would marry butternut squash soup if he could) fought for it to be ranked higher, but he lost resoundingly.

If "meh" were a Panera Bread soup, then this would be that soup. Although you could definitely taste both chicken and rice in this recipe (a generous use of the term), the whole effect was gluey, glutinous, and lousy with cornstarch. The rice was super chewy and tasted reconstituted, while the "creamy" base was less a liquid than some sort of non-Newtonian solid that jiggled when you poked it.

As the husband put it, "I guess this would be okay if I were sick, but I'm not sick." To my mind, if you're 50 years into an apocalypse and you open a can of chicken and rice chowder, this is what it would taste like. And honestly, when that's the bar, this soup is a-okay. At any other time (e.g., on a fall day when you have time, free will, and other soup options), it's best avoided. While the small girl agreed with us, it is once again worth noting that the small boy thought this was good, but then, there's no accounting for taste.

I'm no aficionado of broccoli cheddar soup. Typically, I find it heavy and somewhat fake, and even the homemade version usually seems a little over the top. So I was prepared not to like the broccoli cheddar option, but as with many of the Panera Bread soup options, I was surprised. Yes, it had the standard cornstarch flavor and consistency that you find in so many quickie soups. And yes, the cheese tasted fake, like the stuff they put on nachos in stadiums.

Yet the broccoli chunks tasted like legit vegetables. The flavor profile was rich without being too salty. And it was hearty and filling, a fact on which everyone but the husband agreed. I certainly wouldn't refuse a bowl of it if I were hungry. (Though, to be honest, that goes for everything on this list.) We argued for a bit about whether this or the cream of chicken and wild rice soup should get sixth place but ultimately decided on this one because its ingredients tasted a little truer to what they claimed to be.

I liked it because when I'm not ranking chocolate ice cream or carrot cake, I try to steer clear of less-than-healthy dining choices. This, along with a veggie sandwich, would do the trick if I were on the go and Panera was my option. (By the way, you can get a soup and sandwich as part of the You Pick Two deal, which is one of the best hacks for saving money at Panera. Food for thought ... lol.)

If you're going to call it homestyle chicken noodle soup, then you should at least make sure your chicken noodle soup tastes like it really was made from scratch. To a certain extent, this Panera Bread soup did hit the mark. The broth, the carrots, and the onions all tasted like they could have been made in your Jewish grandparents' kitchen. The noodles were okay, neither too soggy nor too firm, and they kept decently well in the fridge over the next few days.

Overall, it tasted almost, but not quite, like real chicken noodle soup. The only problem was the slight taste of aluminum can, which is confusing since these soups are supposedly fresh. Although it was in the bottom half of the ranking, it's a safe bet if you're craving some chicken noodle or want to bring comfort to a friend recovering from a cold.

Since the age of 10, I have been going to La Provence in Lake Oswego, Oregon, with my family. There, you can find the best bowl of French onion soup this side of the Atlantic, so it's safe to say I went into this prejudiced and ready to give low marks accordingly. However, the Bistro French Onion Soup from Panera Bread surprised me. While it didn't compare to our beloved neighborhood French restaurant, it offered a fair accounting of what French onion is supposed to be. The bread was good, the cheese was good, the broth was rich, and the onions were nice and soft.

Among our complaints was the fact that the broth smacked of bouillon, which isn't ideal. Also, it was a bit too salty, so without a salad or a lemonade, it became overpowering after a few bites. However, it was rich and creamy, oniony and beefy, and it deserves its spot in the top half of our ranking.

Rarely, in our taste tests, does the small girl offer serious opinions. She has, since her earliest years, been a very good eater, partial to fruits and veggies as well as to starch, cheese, and sweets. Her unruffled approach to food means many things on which others have an opinion, bad or good, are merely fine in her book, end of report. So it is always noteworthy when she puts her hand up or puts her foot down, but she was diehard devoted to this Panera Bread soup, which she thought we ranked too low because it was, to her, the best. She loved the smooth broth, the toothy but soft black beans, and all the seasonings.

The rest of us felt that while it was decent, certainly better than anything you'd find in a can, it wasn't as good as my homemade version and was therefore not very impressive. Black bean soup is, after all, beans and broth and veggies and spices, at ratios that are easy for the home cook — and presumably the standardized factory — to get right. That it was somewhat disappointing was, to the rest of us, a black mark on the black bean soup. It was mild enough, though, which stood out in that some premade black bean soups are intolerably spicy for no real reason, and for that we ranked it higher than we would have otherwise.

This soup was so good that I would order a vat of it if I could. Or at least a bread bowl. Indeed, I would order a double bread bowl if Panera still made it. The only reason this creamy tomato soup didn't rank the best was because my husband refuses to have anything to do with cooked tomatoes, claiming that they give him mortal heartburn. (One might point out that he never takes an antacid and simply refuses to eat cooked tomatoes, causing the rest of us to have to work around his dietary preferences even though we all like them. But then again, one could argue many things about the husband, and shouldn't, because he might read this.)

The rest of us thought the Panera Bread creamy tomato soup was herby, creamy, bright, rich, and thick. Basically, any adjective you would associate with a great tomato soup, this one brought it to the yard. It would be right at home even in a nice French bistro, and the fact that tomato soup is kind of hard to screw up shouldn't factor in. It was, quite simply, a lovely fast food soup and should be lauded as such.

Not being one who likes spicy, meaty chili, I did not see this coming: Panera Bread's Hearty Fireside Chili took home the gold without contest. It is legit chili, spicy but super delicious and containing all the flavors I associate with a homemade pot of meat and bean stew. It was a tad bit sweet, which we liked, but mostly bespoke of the roasted tomatoes, chili peppers, kidney beans, cilantro, and beef swimming in its simmering broth.

Not only did we rank this best because it beat out all its compatriots, but we also ranked it best because it tasted exactly as it should; it really was a delicious version of chili that I wouldn't be ashamed to bring to a potluck if I ran out of time in the kitchen. If you're stuck on which Panera Bread soup to get for lunch, think on it no further: This is the one.

Tasting Panera Bread soup was a pretty simple affair: Order eight kinds, wait for them to arrive at your table, spoon them into your soup hole one by one. Because we wanted to make sure to be fair to all the soups, we ordered them at exactly the same time, asked for them to arrive at the same time, and tried a spoonful of each before consuming any more of a particular favorite. We each tried the same kind of soup at once to avoid confusion and ensure we all had the same experience, and we also avoided eating any of the bread or chips before we'd tasted each product and written up our notes on it.

Because each kind of soup was so different from its brethren, we didn't choose standardized factors like most of our taste tests. Instead, we used one litmus test: Did it taste like the kind of soup it said it was? If you made it from scratch or ordered it at a real restaurant, would it pass muster? We found this to be a very effective test, as one can almost immediately answer this question in the affirmative or the negative about almost any soup, and particularly about Panera Bread soups, which are definitely of the faster food variety.

Price did not factor in this ranking. All soup bowls cost $8.49 and came with a hunk of baguette or a bag of chips, your choice. Finally, this mission's taste testers included, per usual, myself, my husband, the small girl, and the small boy.