October 11
Panera Baked Potato Soup
Food
This review is kind of cheating, for two reasons. One, because I had this soup yesterday so it's not a review of something I did today (sorry, but I went to the mall and found absolutely nothing I wanted to buy, which I guess is it's own review of that mall...) but also because if you've known me for longer than like a week you probably already know that I love potatoes and I love potato soup.
The reason I'm calling this one out specifically though is that since I love potato soup so much, I've had a lot of them. Like a lot. And I've had Panera's soup a lot, I used to go there once a week to meet up with friends, for years. And end of the day, Panera still has my favorite potato soup of the ones you can get at restaurants, and it's different than the one I make at home but probably better. For one thing, a lot of "baked potato" soups like to have some kind of earthy flavor in it that I think is from leaving some of the skin on the potatoes. Nobody needs that. Sometimes they include too much bacon, or it's too crispy/crunchy and it ruins the mix of textures. But a lot of times it boils down to the soup itself is too thick or too thin. Or they add too many green things. Or somehow there's not enough potato, I mean, who does that?
Panera's baked potato soup is the Goldilocks potato soup, it's just right. The really weird thing though is that the kind you can buy in the store to heat up at home isn't actually as good, so I really don't know. But one day maybe I'll find a recipe to make at home that's like this one so I don't have to always remember what day of the week it is to make sure I get my soup.
