Taste Test: Panera's New Breakfast Sandwiches, Ranked

Sometimes, after your umpteenth Egg McMuffin or fast-food breakfast burrito, you need an on-the-go breakfast that feels just a little healthier. The quality of the food and ingredients shine extremely bright at Panera, brighter than nearly every fast-food drive-thru you could hit.

Thanks to some new breakfast sandwiches and morning treats, there are a ton of breakfast routes you can take at Panera. Want somebody else to try before you buy? I tried eight of Panera’s breakfast sandwiches and ranked them.

This is the most like an Egg McMuffin, which is probably the reason I like it. The ham itself is lunch meat, and the eggs taste far more real than at a place like McDonald’s or Wendy’s. The only issue here is the same issue that Panera has with almost all of the breakfast sandwiches: The bread is just about all you can taste.

It’s a bakery, I get that, and the bread is excellent for the scale it’s produced at Panera. But sticking a slice of ham on a thick ciabatta roll doesn’t exactly make a ham sandwich. It’s just a loaf of bread with a little ham in it. Perhaps a new breakfast bread is in order. What’s the problem with a classic English muffin?

Salty-sweet combos are always a love-it-or-hate-it kind of thing, and personally, I love it. The real ingenuity of this sandwich is the cinnamon bread, which is somewhere between a croissant and a cinnamon roll.

It’s crispy and flaky, yet doesn’t shatter into thousands of shards with every bite. It’s buttery and doughy, yet still has that twinge of cinnamon, and combined with the saltiness of the sausage and the fattiness of the egg and cheese, this is a huge winner for me. It’s very big, and not the kind of thing I could eat every morning, but it has my respect.

The multigrain bagel flat that this sandwich is served on is incredibly odd. The dried oats across the top do not scream appetizing. Yet inside the weird bagel, which you can swap for any other bread, is the stuff I want when I’m eating breakfast. Melty white cheddar, avocado, and tomato is much more of the morning vibe I’m looking for, as opposed to a sandwich loaded with bacon, sausage, or steak.

And yet, the Steak & Wake lands at No. 4. The steak and egg sandwich has been done many ways; sometimes with thick-cut steak, sometimes with burger patties, and sometimes with thinly-sliced Philly-esque steak. That’s what Panera is doing here, and even though every bite feels just a little odd, I really like it. It keeps me coming back.

You’ve got options to add bacon or sausage, but it’s my opinion that you shouldn’t do that. This is best left alone, at its simplest. The truth is, I don’t agree with a croissant as a breakfast sandwich vessel. They’re too sweet and too flaky. I adore a good croissant, but I need that thing a la carte.

If you disagree with me, you’ll love this.

Maybe it’s just the sandwich I received, but the too-much-bread problem peaked here. If I had to break this sandwich into a pie chart, it’s gonna be 75% bread, 20% bacon, 5% egg.

That’s a horrible ratio, ‘Nera. What’s worse is that the bacon is thin, flimsy, and bland. Panera is one of my favorite chain restaurants, but I’m legitimately disappointed in that quality. Skip bacon across the board.

This sandwich is not bad at all if you don’t think about it.

Because if you do start thinking about it, this sandwich is conceptually very creepy. Tasty chipotle sauce and tangy peppers be damned. Chicken and egg on the same sandwich just doesn’t quite sit right in my brain’s tummy.

Despite the last place ranking, this really isn’t bad. I personally find Asiago cheese extremely overpowering; I have no idea why it’s such a popular bagel. The stuff inside is good, but you’ve got some double trouble going on here. Panera’s bread is already the dominating force in all of these sandwiches, and that’s without being covered in a very strong cheese. I know there’s sausage in there. I can see the sausage in there. But all I can taste is Asiago cheese.

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