Some of the best dishes found at Panera, the North American chain of bakery-cafés, are the soups. Its creamy chicken and wild rice soup is surprisingly decadent, while its cozy broccoli-cheddar soup seems like it was conceived purely to exist in a crusty bread bowl (and it probably was). One of my favorites, though, is the restaurant's chicken tortilla soup.
While it doesn't have that deep porky smokiness of a long-simmered pozole rojo, the Panera chicken tortilla soup hits all the right notes for a satisfying nod to Mexican-inspired flavors. It's lightly spiced, thanks to the addition of chili powder and paprika, and packed with poblano peppers, corn and black beans.
