Panera Lobster Bisque Soup

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In the late 1980s, an entrepreneurial couple in St. Louis, Missouri visited a sourdough bakery and café in San Francisco. They were so impressed that they decided to create their own version back home. The resulting restaurant was known as St. Louis Bread Co., until it was bought by a larger company in 1993. The larger company renamed the chain Panera, and since then it has grown to over 2,100 locations nationwide. A handful of those locations in St. Louis still bear the original St. Louis Bread Co. name.

Panera — or St. Louis Bread Co., if you prefer — remains a popular upscale spot for soups, salads, and, of course, sourdough. In recent years, the chain has taken to selling select items in grocery stores, including a few of its soups. Aldi has sold some of those soups in single-serve containers over the years. When another one — lobster bisque — arrived at my local Aldi, I picked one up.

Panera Bread Lobster Bisque is an Aldi Find. Each store gets a single stock, and once it’s sold out, you won’t be able to find it again until it comes back, whenever that might be. You can’t order this online from Aldi if it’s out of stock at your local store.

It comes in a single-serve 10-ounce containers and cost $3.19 each, or 32 cents an ounce. That’s the same price we paid for these in 2023, and it is roughly the same price they go for at Walmart. Getting the soup at the restaurant is liable to cost over twice that much, so whatever you may think of Panera soups, from a price perspective this is pretty good.

In addition, my local Panera doesn’t always carry lobster bisque, so that makes this an added bonus.

We found the soup in the refrigerated section of our Aldi. While I can’t see any language saying it needs to be kept refrigerated, I opted to do so until I made it. There is a best by date on the bottom, so be mindful of that.

The package lists two methods of preparation: microwave or stovetop. To cook on the stovetop, pour the soup into a saucepan and heat it thoroughly, being careful not to let it come to a boil. To heat it in the microwave, remove the lid and film, then place it on a microwave-safe plate, cover loosely, heat on high for 2-3 minutes or until hot, stirring halfway through, and finally let it sit for one minute.

I don’t like microwaving in plastic, so I emptied the soup into a microwave-safe bowl and cooked it in the microwave that way.

I thought the soup tasted okay. I’ve had lobster bisque before, and lobster bisque can be very good. This version didn’t quite hit that mark. The taste was passable and there wasn’t much visible lobster in the soup. Some people would reasonably point out that, given the price and the fact that I got it from a grocery store, that this is about what I should expect. That’s fair.

From a nutritional standpoint, one serving has 450 calories, 36 grams of fat, 24 grams of saturated fat, 820 milligrams of sodium, 23 grams of carbs, and 8 grams of sugars. None of those numbers are good — the saturated fat is a whopping 120% of the recommended daily value — but, hey, at least there are 5 grams of dietary fiber and 10 grams of protein.

Ingredients include light cream, clam broth from concentrate, lobster meat, butter, water, salted sherry wine, and wheat flour. Allergens listed are milk, shellfish (lobster), and wheat.

The Verdict:

We’ve had other Panera soups at Aldi before, including a broccoli cheddar we liked a lot. This, on the other hand, is a decent, if not spectacular lobster bisque. It’s also much higher in saturated fat than the other Panera soups we’ve tried at the grocer. Still, if you’re a big fan of lobster bisque, especially the Panera stuff, this might be worth taking a flyer on on account of price if you see it the store.