Panera Employee May Have Just Leaked A Cheesy New Menu Item On TikTok
Have you ever needed to prepare a meal quickly and ended up just making a "sandwich" with a bunch of odds and ends from the fridge? That's exactly what Panera Bread seems to have done with its latest concoction –– the "Grilled Mac & Cheese."
As leaked in a recent TikTok video from a Panera Bread employee, the new "Grilled Mac & Cheese" takes everyone's favorite cheese sandwich, the perfect-as-is grilled cheese, and then fills it to the brim with fontina mozzarella blend creamy mac & cheese. As if that weren't enough, the whole thing is "toasted and topped" with even more cheese –– one to two tablespoons of "parmesan cheese crisps" (Honest question: who is eating that much cheese in one sitting?). Two thick slices of Classic White Miche keep this cheese/noodle/sandwich-show rolling, although based on the images from the TikTok video, even the bread looks like it's about two seconds from collapsing under the weight of it all.
From the Panera archives to the Panera menu
As it turns out, the Grilled Mac & Cheese isn't just a recent Panera Bread menu addition –– you can find a dish very similar to it detailed in the Panera Bread cookbook on Panera at Home. If the store-version is anything like the cookbook version, it may be even cheesier than anticipated. The recipe calls for –– in addition to a third of a cup of mac & cheese –– two slices of cheddar cheese (not to mention butter on one side of each piece of bread).
Panera fans responding to the TikTok video were mostly enthusiastic about what they saw, with many expressing a desire to sample the new Grilled Mac & Cheese and planning Panera dates around it. According to the creator of the video, the new menu item is available as of September 1st. While there's no word yet from Panera Bread about the official release date, some Panera employees responding in the comments suggested that their own locations had been serving Grilled Mac & Cheese even earlier than September 1st. Whatever the case, those excited for the Grilled Mac & Cheese will certainly be happy.