On Monday Mayor Bloomberg announced a lawsuit against the Poospatuck Indian reservation on Long Island, in an attempt to stop the untaxed sale of 11.3 million cartons of cigarettes on the reservation per year. Today the Times has a great, long article about how the smokes travel from the wholesaler through the reservation and to the streets of New York, where "$5 Men" like "Paco" stand on corners and whisper, "Newports. Loosies. Shorts. Longs." Reporters......

James (pictured), in Prospect Heights, specializes in farm-fresh French-American cuisine. It's said that chef James Calvert once catered a nightmarish photo shoot for the demanding Britney Spears, who dismissed his buffet and demanded BLTs. She then sent those back, insisting upon BLTs sans mayo. Irrevocably scarred, Calvert went on to open what Frank Bruni at the Times describes as "the kind of modest, warm refuge produced by a chef who wants to simplify things, to......

That mayor Bloomberg has an answer for everything. Cabbies want a fuel surcharge to help cover gas costs? Let them drive hybrids. The MTA is promising another fare increase? Let the smokers pay for it. Hizzoner said yesterday that the cost of subway and bus rides won’t have to go up much at all if the state collects taxes on cigarettes sold on Indian reservations. "That just alone would replace one of those fare increases,"......

Biryani is classified as any number of spiced South Asian rice dishes, heavily spiced, and layered with meat—often chicken, lamb, or beef. The biryani at Sangam, a new hole in the wall spot on Bleecker Street just east of 6th Avenue, receives what owner Ishrat Ansari calls “an authentic royal haute cuisine preparation.” The description is definitely merited when it comes to his wife Rafat’s homegrown recipe, which is served all vegetable, with chicken,......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down his verdict on Commerce (pictured), the trendy new inhabitant of 1911 West Village carriage house formerly occupied by Blue Mill Tavern, among others. Overall, he deems the new tenant fussy and cacophonous; chef Harold Moore’s “polyglot menu and intricately wrought dishes let him strut his stuff in a way that a more archetypal bill of fare might not. In doing so he creates a rankling dissonance, his......

The term "diner" usually evokes thoughts of breakfast at midnight and dense menus of Dickensian length. But at the Jackson Diner in the heart of Jackson Heights in Queens, crowds assemble for some of the city's best North Indian food. In the heart of the borough's "little India," a large and casual banquet room with deep purple paper placemats is the go-to spot for a reasonably-priced unlimited lunch buffet and Indian food hankerings of......