Authentic Bagel Company And Beauty's Bagel Shop

The cream cheese will always be there.

Oakland's two newest bagel shops are both emblematic of a glorious new age for deli food in the Bay Area. But don't stop at the schmear: You'll want to walk out of either with a breakfast sandwich in addition to your half-dozen.

Authentic Bagel Company: This wholesale baker now quietly opens its doors on weekends. Its owners, Jason and Mark Scott, are baking perfectly proportioned bagels ($1.75), their density bowing to their Rhode Island origins, and their subtle tang nodding at Californian sourdough.

When you order a breakfast sandwich ($5), one of the brothers will crack an egg onto the griddle, melt a slice of Cheddar cheese overtop, and fry up a mess of thick-cut bacon or a sausage patty.

Beauty's Bagel Shop: The wood-fired oven here, which opened a few weeks ago after months of anticipation, gives Blake Joffe and Amy Remsen's skinny Montreal-style bagels ($1.65) sharply defined crusts and a suspicion of smokiness.

The everything bagel, with fennel and sesame seeds prominent in its coating, is an awesome shell for a breakfast sandwich ($9) filled with a scrambled egg and pan-fried squares of cornmeal-thickened chicken scrapple.

Authentic Bagel Company, 463 Second St. (at Broadway), Oakland, 510-459-1201 or abagelcompany.com; Beauty's Bagel Shop, 3838 Telegraph Ave. (at 39th St.), Oakland, 510-788-6098 or beautysbagelshop.com