BEST BREAD/PASTRIES

Panera Bread 3019 South Dirksen Parkway, 529-6200 3101 White Oaks Drive, 726-5070 Panera offers approximately sixteen types of bread, nine varieties of bagels, and six kinds of muffins. But they don’t stop there. Panera Bread also has a wide variety of brownies, cookies, scones and coffee cakes. With so much to choose from, Panera is a clear winner of the best bakery/ bread category. One Sunday before heading to church, we decided to take a quick trip to Panera to test our voters’ selection. Well, our eyes (and stomach) got the better of us and we decided to try a couple – pecan bread (pastry dough twisted and braided and doused with butter and ground pecans and coated with a light syrup) and pecan roll, filled with cinnamon and sugar, and topped with caramel and pecans. OMG! We thought that we’d skipped church and gone straight to heaven. As we gathered our belongings and prepared to leave, Panera’s Cobblestone Roll (cinnamon raisin bread with chunks of apples and topped with streusel and white icing) caught our eye. We decided to snag one for the following day, though temptation got the better of us and we devoured it later that night. Heaven surely has a Panera Bread, but why wait?

BEST BARBECUE

Smokey Bones Bar and Fire Grill 2660 South Dirksen Parkway, 528-6410 In the ongoing battle for best BBQ, only 44 votes separate the first and second place winners. But in the end, just like the last three years, Smokey Bones reigns supreme in this BOS category. It’s easy to see why. The smoked beef brisket is marinated 24 hours before it’s slowly smoked for six hours. The ribs are rubbed and marinated before being hickory-smoked for four hours. True BBQ connoisseurs should definitely have their ribs with one of the restaurant’s three fire-grill flavors – original, Memphis dry rub or brown sugar. One dish absolutely worth mentioning is its new BBQ chicken flatbread, featuring a crisp flatbread brushed with BBQ sauce, and topped with shredded grilled chicken breast, diced red onions, and Asiago cheese. It is spectacular!

Hickory River Smokehouse, the runner-up, is big on taste. What makes this restaurant unique is that its beef brisket, pork shoulder, turkey breast and pork loin are rubbed with Hickory River’s signature blend of spices. All of its meats are infused with hickory wood and smoked in the establishment’s slow-cook BBQ pit. Our personal favorite is the spicy polish sausage, served on a toasted bun and swimming in barbecue sauce.

Runner-up: Hickory River Smokehouse