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Rising expectations
[Times photos: Jamie Francis]
Dominic Warrell and Suzanne Emery live near the Panera on Ulmerton Road and say they enjoy their visits to the bakery and cafe. |
By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 3, 2001
The rebirth of bread has made its way here, and the proliferation of Panera's bakery-cafes is part of the good news.
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Look sharp, folks. The bread revolution has spread with Pinellas' first locations of Panera, a bakery chain traveling at the speed of Starbucks and fueled by a combustible mix of yeast, caffeine and high-demographic marketing.
Some of you knew bread was coming. If you've been out of town you've tasted the uprising against bad, pouffy bread. Bread bakers have made the ordinary stuff of life better, just as microbrewers did beer and baristas did coffee.
Panera bakeries have opened around the bay area. These loaves await buyers at the Ulmerton Road location.
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Some of us had been lucky enough to find a new baker or new breadmaker bringing old crusty Italian techniques into our midst, from Casa del Pane on St. Pete Beach or Mazzaro Italian Market in St. Petersburg to Delizie or Pane Rustica in Tampa. We've got bagelmakers by the dozen, but only the one you like is any good, and it's still not as good as H&H in New York. There are a few struggling Old World bakers, the surviving German, French, Russian, Armenian, Italian, Swiss and Cuban bakeries that fill their cases every day with cakes, cookies, muffins and doughnuts, and always smell so good.
If you frequent any of these gems, my hat is off to you. You've already been rewarded with the taste and texture of treats sweet and savory fresh from the oven. There's no greater magic in cooking -- and no cheaper thrill in food shopping.
Ah, but the pitiful rest of you, stuck on a planet of tasteless bread, cupcakes and toaster treats and only memories of when there were bakeries in every neighborhood where kids would stop on their way home from school or after church just for the smell.
You may be the real suckers for Panera. Almost every time I stop in, I hear, "Oh, those cinnamon rolls, I'm from Chicago, right outside. There used to be a place... ." Then they spy the tiers of Danish or, oh my, taste a bear claw (the best sweet in the place for my money).
The age-old pastry shop appeal of almonds, cherry fillings and gooey icing is as big a lure as trendy hunger for focaccia, sourdough and nine-grain bread, but Panera is a throughly millennial outfit, fast food for Newer Age. It's a chain, of course, combining the airport-mall Au Bon Pain with St. Louis Bread Co. at 200 locations.
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RESTAURANT REVIEW
Panera
2282 Ulmerton Road, Clearwater, (727) 592-9690; Brandon Town Centre, Brandon, (813) 653-3837; 11860 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., Tampa, (813) 866-9333; 112 S West Shore Blvd., Tampa, (813) 653-3837; 10801 Starkey Road, Largo, (727) 320-8830 (opens Friday)
Hours: 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday
Details: No smoking, no alcohol, good wheelchair access
Special features: Takeout, catering and delivery
Credit cards: AE, MC, V
Reservations: None
Prices: $1 to $6 |
It aims for new neighborhoods, not old; first in Orlando (10 locations) then to Tampa, at Brandon Town Centre, USF and West Shore, then to Feather Sound and, as you read, Largo. Probable next stops by the end of 2002: Palm Harbor, Carrollwood, Hyde Park, New Tampa, Tyrone, Countryside. Accent is on hip, swooshing graphics, urban blond colors and and easy-chair decor pitched to the Einstein-Starbucks-Borders crowd.
That's the plan, and it's jamming parking lots and generating buzz from twenty-somethings to aging yuppies and beyond. But it's still evolving (the Feather Sound bakery is the first one in a new mall format), so there's time to adjust the recipe -- and Panera needs tinkering if it is to deliver solid tastes as well as tasteful hangouts.
It must start with bread; Panera's wall of loaves, round, square, baguettes and miches, looks good, almost primal, but most of them need to be crustier.
Panera's sourdough has sourness, but it only occasionally has the crisp crunch of the handmade breads I love. Other breads are much softer. The best are those in which the crust has extra help, such as the cheese on the asiago bread or three-seeded sourdough, or the flavor of the dough, as in the olive bread, has distinction.
It's not easy to make great bread on a mass scale in a centralized system, but my guess is the dough needs longer proofing before baking to harden the crust. Panera's master bakers should re-examine the final product. They needn't change them all, just make me one rustic loaf.
In sweets, Panera is more of an old-fashioned American bake shop full of sugary delights than a patisserie, but that's all I need. Bagels will offend traditionalists with their tutti-frutti flavors, but the misshapen cinnamon crunch may win them over. Two are failures, however: Scones are more like muffins than the British original, and croissants do have butter, but they lack crispness and flakiness. Back to the drawing board for both.
One joy of good bread is how it elevates salad or soup into a grand meal, lunch or a light dinner. Panera does well by salads, made with good greens or nuts and mandarin oranges (when the mandarin oranges are at hand) or tomatoes when, all together now, they are good tomatoes!
A secret strength here is soup, a hot trend that Florida is missing. I'm not talking about the trick of serving soup in a bread bowl; it's the soup itself, warm and rich with herbal punch. Corn chili chowder or its cousin, chicken chili, are velvety and gutsy; vegetarian black bean is so hearty you won't miss the pork. If you come for bread, you may as well stay for the soup.
It beats the sandwiches, which should be the pinnacle of breadshop dining. The choices are bewildering, corporate favorites plus your choice on all kinds of bread, plus bagels, focaccia and panini. The last, those Italian grilled sandwiches, are best in my book because the bread becomes crisper.
My bigger complaints are the fillings of meat and cheese, the blandest homogenized cold cuts. Roast beef and smoked Cheddar is as dull as the turkey breast. How about some good salami or capicolla, a decent blue or Jarlsberg, or freshly fried bacon?
Something else that needs work is service, and since Panera operates on self-service, it's not all their fault. It's maddening to stand in line to give one person your order, pay a second and wait for a third to hand over your food (you're lucky if it takes only three), while you draw your own coffee. I've gone mad in bagel shops and coffee bars, chain and independent, for years, but I don't ask for sympathy. This is how yuppies do penance.
The problem is not solely in the staff and how they are organized (although many Starbucks actually work well). Often customers know less than the staff. We rush in for a hit of cool and confront more choices in coffees, breads and pastries than we've seen in years. It's a pop quiz we must take standing up, with no menu or cheat sheet; we dither, stammer and fail, even before the cashier can. If you've been in line behind Mr. Stupid trying to buy a lottery ticket, you know what I mean. Just jack up the pretension factor.
Panera will learn. So will we. At bakeries and bread shops of all kinds, and I hope restaurants, we will treasure our daily bread again.
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