"When's the last time you had a mouth-watering boiled and baked BAGEL?"

I saw this question the other day on Bagel Wise, a California-based company's Web site and I thought: What would businesspeople from the United States and Canada say? People who have lived and worked in St. Petersburg for a long time.

"I can't remember," I imagine would be the reply from most of them.

For me though, the answer is easier. I do remember. I had my first and only bagel about two months ago, while sitting in a car speeding down a West Virginia highway.

And I liked it. A lot. Especially with cream cheese dripping off it and a big cup of coffee in my other hand. "America's answer to the Russian bublik," I thought. And it was a tasty equivalent.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned this experience to a Canadian friend of mine. "Wouldn't it be a good thing if there was a bagelry in St. Petersburg," we concluded.

Although I missed bagels, I could tell how much more they meant to my friend, who had probably been eating bagels in the morning his whole life. I could imagine how he felt when he landed on Russia's shores and found nothing but bubliki. And not all of them very fresh, I imagine.

Within a few minutes, my friend was typing away at a letter to a company called Great Canadian Bagel, Ltd., a chain of bagelries that happens to have three outlets in Moscow.

"I am writing to you as, at present, it is lunchtime in our office and there is nothing that interests us nearby to eat," he wrote, his letter dripping with the pathos of the bagel-deprived. "We could really go for a great bagel. ... Unfortunately, the closest Great Canadian Bagel outlet is 650 kilometers away in Moscow. I am writing on behalf of our staff to beg you to open a location in our city soon."

"What a great letter," responded Glenn Tucker, director of development for Great Canadian Bagel, the very same day. He explained that opening a franchise in St. Petersburg would cost about $100,000 and require 300 to 1,000 square meters of retail space.

He also said that he had spoken about my friend's letter to Boris Paikin, who holds the company's franchising rights in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Tucker's response got me hoping that maybe, just maybe, there was hope of having a real bagel - with cream cheese and coffee - here in St. Petersburg someday. But, alas, my hopes were dashed.

I called Paikin in Moscow at the number that Tucker had provided, and he told me that, although the St. Petersburg market looks attractive for the bagel business, the company has no plans to open a branch here.

"Moscow is enough for us for now. We have no time for St. Petersburg," he said. But then he added that if a partner from St. Petersburg approached him, he "would be glad to help start a franchise" here.

I don't know if that local partner should be a foreigner or a Russian. After all, foreigners have had some unfortunate experiences in the food business here. The Minutka cafe, formerly Subway, is the best known example, of course. There is also the Irish-style Shamrock Bar on Teatralnaya Ploshchad, which also passed over to Russian ownership at some point.

But, on the other hand, Russian entrepreneurs are focusing more on our national cuisine. Recently, someone announced the creation of Blinburger, a Russian-style fast-food chain that will be the local response to McDonalds. Last week, bakers in Vologda tried to impress the Guinness Book of Records by baking 55 bubliki that weighed a total of 440 kilograms.

I suppose that whoever comes along will have to think carefully in order to avoid being left with nothing. But they should think about Paikin's statement that the market is attractive here for bagels. And they should have seen the hungry look on my Canadian friend's face.