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......

This week the Times's Frank Bruni has a mouth-watering rave for Southern Italian restaurant Convivo (pictured), chef Michael White's revision of the stuffy L'Impero in Tudor City. He declares that Convivio has emerged from the transition "as a pasta lover’s dreamland...soulful and unpretentious...Mr. White can do it all...and is doing even better work with pasta at Convivio than he has done at Alto." Skip the seafood, though: "Roll-ups of fried swordfish with a yogurt sauce......

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......

Today the Times's Frank Bruni has kind words for Nolita newcomer Elizabeth, which "has its problems, annoyances and confusions...and it still doesn’t seem entirely sure of what it wants to be...But it also has an adventurous, sometimes silly spirit that’s winning in its way." (Note the skull pictured here.) "My waitress’s outfit one night (scary knee-high boots with a skimpy black satin dress) made me wonder if she was poised to mete out cocktails or......

Michael Wilson over at the Times wanders the boroughs to talk to working class types whose inability to afford gas or airplane tickets means they're stuck in town all summer. The article devotes over 1,400 to the phenomenon, which, as you no doubt know, is called a "staycation," in the parlance of our times. Wilson's crazy about the portmanteau, in a Seinfeldian sort of way: "...it’s a very fun word to say. Staycation. How was your staycation? My parents went on staycation, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Our son-in-law threw his back out on staycation." (Salsa, anyone?)...

This week Frank Bruni files two shorter reviews for the Times instead of handing down his usual hefty decision on a single restaurant. He heads east to follow up on Sushi Yashuda on 43rd Street, declaring that from the time it opened "more than eight years ago, when William Grimes awarded it three stars in The New York Times, it has been among the best. And a recent visit suggested that there’s been no slippage,......

The Times took Red Hook's temperature this weekend, almost two months after the dreaded IKEA -- the first in New York City -- reared its ugly blue head on the Brooklyn waterfront. And contrary to all the hand-wringing, the paper finds that the big box "turned out to be less annoying than people thought." A worker at the Van Brunt Street cafe Baked says, "Everyone was talking about it before. But now, no one......

A 50-year-old Wisconsin paper boy who tried to get a life (thank you) by billing the Times for thousands of fake subscriptions is now charged with wire fraud. Martin Holtet of La Crosse, Wis. allegedly created 8,500 fictitious New York Times readers to help boost his sales numbers; lawyers for the Times say the company then paid him $227,000 to deliver the papers, which he recycled instead. The Times also claims it lost almost $100,000......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down a generally favorable verdict on Persimmon Kimchi House, the 20-seat, communal table restaurant from chef Youngsun Lee, who cut his teeth with David Chang (Momofuku). Bruni admits that “…at least a third of the dishes I tried prompted yawns or head-scratching. But at least another third riveted me, and all in all I enjoyed what struck me as the polar opposite of a cookie-cutter, fashion-driven meal, the......

The Sun’s Paul Adams is the latest critic to get around to Hundred Acres (pictured), the meticulously-sourced, farm-to-table restaurant which used to be Provence. While the Daily News was haunted by the ghosts of the old restaurant, Adams says “the transformation is a delightful blast of fresh air. A sultry Southern accent marks the restaurant's menu… where "seasonal" isn't just a buzzword, but where you actually look forward to returning season after season to see......

Chef Marco Canora is having a good morning; Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni says “there may not be any dish I’ve enjoyed more in recent months than the pork blade steak” at Terroir (pictured). His column this week looks at how chefs at wine bars like Terroir and Gottino have transcended the “glorified snacks” that used to be de rigueur, to “exemplify a wine-bar evolution so thorough that nomenclature can’t keep up.” Less criticism than......

Judging from Get Smart’s first remarkably unfunny trailer, you might assume this $80 million remake of the late-‘60s sitcom, starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway and Alan Arkin, would be a guaranteed flop, but it’s actually getting some decent reviews. (It’s a mixed bag, of course.) The Village Voice’s avant garde film buff J. Hoberman, of all people, deems it a “pleasant surprise… an all-purpose (and often quite funny) goofball action comedy.” Or maybe critics......

The Times’s Frank Bruni reports “a mix of exciting, intriguing and frustrating moments” in his review of Elettaria (pictured), the haute-Indian restaurant in the Village. BYO rimshot because one liners abound: “Elettaria describes itself as ‘spice-driven.’ (I’m waiting for the restaurant that’s driven by Morgan Freeman.)” But seriously folks, he loves the fluke in a sauce of coconut and tapioca pearls, while other entrees prove disappointing. Still, it gets a star for the “definite peaks......

Just in time for summer, the Times has brought the fear to the park, where an army of infectious organisms await anyone reckless enough to let the grass touch their bare feet. According to a number of very uptight dermatologists, taking off your shoes in the park is pretty much akin to soaking them in a bucket of bacteria. Dermatologist Judith Hellman gave the paper ten good reasons why Richard Gere should have used a......

Fellow vendors and loyal customers are rallying to the defense of Antonios Dragonas, the 50-year-old pushcart food vendor who may soon be put out of business. For the past 25 years, Vendy runner-up Antonios Dragonas, has been serving his famous lamb shish kebab from the corner of Madison Avenue and East 62nd Street, but now the Department of Health is refusing to renew his license and permit. The Times has it that during a twelve......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni awards two stars to Eighty One (pictured) in a decidedly mixed review. He thinks the “dizzying” Upper West Side restaurant in the Excelsior Hotel has “attention deficits” and needs Ritalin: “It provides an especially clear example of a kind of culinary preening – call it ego food – that may speak less to the satisfaction of customers than to the self-regard of proprietors.” Nor does Bruni care for the......

Groundbreaking postwar artist Robert Rauschenberg died last night at the age of 82. The adventurous painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, set designer and composer was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, a small refinery town with little cultural stimuli. (In his adult life he took the name Robert.) His father worked for a local utility, and the family’s lifestyle was so financially tight that, according to the Times, Rauschenberg’s mother......

Today’s wake for a beloved New York institution is being held in honor of Mei Lai Wah Coffee House in Chinatown. It seems the Times’s Eric Asimov, who usually writes about wine, doesn’t subsist on vino alone; he needs his coffee and steamed pork buns as well. And ever since Mei Lai Wah closed last week after a long, losing struggle with the Health Department, Asimov has been in mourning: Mei Lai Wah was indeed......

The Gray Lady slums it out to far East Williamsburg to report on the hipster bohemian squalor of the sprawling McKibbin Street “dorms;” two hulking buildings converted from garment factories to lofts in the late nineties by a trio of savvy Stuyvesant alums. It’s since become a filthy, bed-bug ravaged rite of passage for the young DIY arts set, who pile on top of each other in warren-like lofts more crowded than one of Dan......

As if offering a final coda (or is it?) to the suspenseful Momofuku Ko reservation saga, the Times’s Frank Bruni has officially opined on the breathlessly hyped, 12-seat restaurant from rock star chef David Chang. Bruni extols it with three stars, calling it “noteworthy beyond its addling all-computer reservation system and the intense, revelatory pleasures of its partly Asian, partly French, wholly inventive food… Ko in its early months serves a few dishes that merely......

Apparently, Mayor Bloomberg uses the word unconscionable so much that the Times poured 969 other words into analyzing the verbal tic. According to the article, Bloomberg’s U-bombing is definitely excessive; he drops the heavy pejorative in situations that don’t merit it, like when a reporter dared ask him if his trip to Israel was calculated to woo Jewish voters. (“That’s unconscionable. You should be ashamed to ask that question,” he reportedly snapped.) And when a......

Today Frank Bruni reviews Adour (pictured), the four-month-old St. Regis Hotel restaurant conceived by extravagant French chef Alain Ducasse. While it’s not “rapturous” enough to merit the Times’s highest four star rating, it’s still “first-rate: polished service, a knockout wine list, beautiful oil-poached cod, gorgeous roasted lamb and exquisite desserts.” And Bruni does confirm our earlier speculation about some kind of haute bagel on the menu. On the other side of the spectrum and the......

The 20-member New York Times editorial board nearly endorsed Barack Obama for president, but ultimately Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. pushed through a Clinton endorsement, anonymous sources have told The New Republic. The behind-the-scenes article echoes conjecture from New York Magazine that Sulzberger’s BFF gym buddy Steven Rattner, a major Clinton donor and former Times reporter, may have been the deciding factor. An unnamed Times staffer regrets the error: “We're on the wrong......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Lebanese Ilili, saying “Ilili is probably the atmospherically grandest excursion into Middle Eastern cooking that New York has ever seen.” While much of the menu is inconsistent, he loves the kebabs and kaftas. Says the service is “occasionally confused.” And get the essmalieh for dessert. In Dining Briefs, Peter Meehan goes to Abraço Espresso (pictured), says “it’s tiny, it brews excellent coffee, and the little food that it......

After a turbulent couple of months at Gawker, the New York Times Style section is checking the media website’s pulse and wondering, with equal parts hope and desperation, if Gawker has finally jumped the “snark”. The Times’s uptick in Gawker stalking mirrors their aggressive game of catch-up with “teh internets” by increasingly emphasizing blogs on their website, and the article finds the Gray Lady digging a nice, cozy grave for Gawker owner and editor Nick......