Panera Bread Medford

I was going to another restaurant for my lunch on this sunny but bitterly cold day, but they had the audacity to close without telling me so instead I went to Panera Bread in Medford. This is the third new store in the renovated plaza on Riverside Ave.

Plenty of parking despite the two other eateries in the same plaza.

As far as Panera's goes, this one is quite small. After taking my time to decide what to have, it turned out that the soup I selected wasn't available, despite being on the board. "We just haven't updated the board," impressive.

It was nice and bright with a good amount of seating.

I decided to go with the pick two option and picked a cup of Turkey Chili ($4.69) and 1/2 Napa Almond Chicken Salad Sandwich (4.29) with Chips. But wait, were is the chips?

There they are after another trip to the pickup window. There was a sign there saying that if your order weren't right, you would get a treat. Did I? Nope. The bread was chewy instead of crisp as a baguette should be. The chili was decent even if it was mild but, at least, it was hot. The very small amount of chicken salad was way too sweet for my liking and the sandwich was just two slices of bread. They charge you $4.29 for this? For just under ten dollars, I think this was expensive and I don't care how organic it is.