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Chain Opens O.C. Stores: Bagels, anyone?

Restaurant critics say Orange County doesn’t have many world-class delis, but now it has two Baltimore Bagel shops.

The 12-year-old San Diego chain opened its first Orange County store--and its first store outside San Diego--in Irvine in March.

The second Orange County store, in Laguna Niguel, opened Nov. 3.

The shops offer 25 kinds of bagels and bialys, plus hot sandwiches (on bagels, naturally) and a variety of cream cheese spreads.

A bialy, by the way, is a bagel’s first cousin. It contains all the same ingredients except malt and is not boiled before being baked.

Baltimore Bagels is not called San Diego Bagels because company owner Michael Brau, a Pennsylvanian, was exposed to bagels as a child during Sunday morning brunches with his grandparents, aunts and uncles in Baltimore.