Tucked onto New York’s historic Front Street, just below the South Street Seaport, Tagmo seems perfectly situated, for it was here that the Clipper and Tall Ships of the 19th century, carrying spices from around the world, came to dock, and the menu at Tagmo is an explosion of such spices in every dish.
       Tagmo (which in Bhutanese means tigress, the symbol of female strength across South Asia, a motif you will see on the wall) is both chef Surbhi Sahni’s labor of love and a commitment to employing women of color. The menu, she says, is based on “regional homestyle food and specialty sweets from across India that tell our stories of migration, cultural exchange and self-determination in the diaspora.” In other words, it is a yet another wonderful tale of Manhattan.
       Sahni (left) previously served as a creative force behind Devi, Tulsi and Saar Bistro in Midtown, as well as the creative director and events director at Hemant Mathur Catering. Tagmo’s premises seem to fit her style and intentions like a glove.
       In the front are her beautifully packaged candies and pastries; up a couple of red brick steps is a well-lighted, brilliantly colorful dining room with a velvet watercolor stained banquette, Persian black and white tiled floor, sea-blue glass light fixtures with gold tassels and a gold-flecked Patagonia stone bar. The walls are half slatted wood, which matches the color of the polished tables, and the wall painted with foliage and birds. The table is set with rustic china and ceramics and folded yellow napkins.
      The bar serves up an array of exotic spiced cocktails and the sake, beer and wine lists are created to match the intensity of the seasonings. The brunch menu features pao, Indian-style street sandwiches with chili ketchup and masala fries.
       Everything at Tagmo is meant to be shared, which is a good part of the fun, with no dish over $27, and there is a helpful dietary key: “gf = gluten free · v = vegan · veg = vegetarian; spice levels low = no heat · mild = little heat · med = medium heat · spicy = very hot.” When it comes to Indian food, heat is not as much a driving factor as balance, some of which is based on religious tradition, all based on healthfulness.  The menu is plant-driven, though not entirely, so you may begin with veggie plates like khatta meetha chaat  ($15), which is a Delhi-style salad of peas, mangoes, cucumbers, crispy potatoes and well-named “devil’s chutney” (left). The bread roll plate ($15) is not just a basket of bread, but deep fried rolls stuffed with paneer cottage cheese, green chilies, onions, cilantro and tomato chili sauce, which is wonderful as a starter not least because it is quite mild but full of spices. Sabudana vada ($17) is a Maharashtrian dish of tapioca cakes with potatoes, roasted peanuts, curry leaves, green chilies, mint and a rich peanut yogurt chutney, which really shows off the delicacy of intertwined seasonings where none overpowers the others.    
       Mamiji’s gobi matar ($15) is another Delhi item of sautéed cauliflower, peas, cumin seeds and green chilies, while Baingan Paratha ($17) is a lush dish of Bihari smoked eggplant with sweet caramelized onions, green chilies and a touch of mustard oil, served with yeasty paratha bread (right). There is always a daily dal ($17) of slowly cooked lentils,  also served with paratha.
       Those who are not vegetarian, like myself, will readily enjoy these dishes, but meats and seafood are not neglected at Tagmo, so adamant carnivores have delectable options like haleem on toast ($21), a luscious dish of slowly cooked goat meat with cracked wheat for texture, lentils, caramelized onions, cilantro and a blend of 32 spices that melded so well that you can’t count them all; it is served on a toasted baguette.  Gushtaba is a Kashmiri dish of minced lamb dumplings simmered in cream sauce, lamb stock and ground Kashmiri red chilies served with rice ($27). Oddly enough, while Indian rice is very aromatic, the rice served at Tagmo has little flavor on its own, so the sauces come in handy. Murg khatta pyaz ($25) is a traditional dish that is first roasted in the tandoori oven and cooked with tomatoes, cashew cream, ghee butter, pickled onions, ginger, garlic and cilantro, served with paratha. It is a perfect study in the equilibrium of richness, smokiness and seasonings.
       I too often find Indian seafood dishes overcooked, especially those  done in the tandoori, but Tagmo’s Tamil-style meen varuval ($25) was a pan-fried fish of the day impeccably juicy, suffused with many flavors of whole red chilies, ginger and garlic, serve with coconut chutney to cool things down and a spiced potato onion pepper medley, a brilliant dish and one that is milder than you might expect from those chilies.
      Eral chukka ($27) are prawns sauteed in ghee with Kashmiri chilies, peppercorns, cumin seeds, tamarind and yogurt served with Bengali kitchri of rice and lentils. That those spices did not mask the essential flavor of the prawns is evidence of the deft hand in the kitchen.
      For dessert, there is a calming-to-the-palate rice pudding with macerated berries and rose syrup ($11) and a selection of six Indian sweets ($15).
       I, for one, have never had any of these dishes at any other Indian restaurant in New York, where, by and large, the menus skew towards the rich food of the Mughal and Punjabi kitchens. Tagmo’s are more subtle and never imbalanced, and the care and service Sahni and her staff shows to every table makes a guest feel part of an extended Indian family rather than one satisfied by the same dozen renditions of tikkas, vindaloos and rogan josh.  

Tagmo is open nightly for dinner and Sat. & Sun. for brunch.

     Katie and David entered Gerald Kiley’s Interpol office on the dot of 11:30, finding him at a cubicle desk among several others in a room enlivened only by the quiet tapping on computers. He was in shirtsleeves, with the kind of face that would never stand out in a crowd of three. He had a pack of Camels on his desk that he fingered until he could go outside and smoke one. He shot a quick glance at David that read, “This woman Katie is very good looking.”
         Kiley opened with, “Frank English said some impressive things about you two.”
         “Really?” said David. “I’m a bit surprised.”
         “Yeah, I read about your exposé in the magazine and how the F.B.I. played a little dirty with you. Good article though, Ms. Cavuto. So, how do you think I can help you?”
         As Katie brought out some file material from her briefcase, David said, “Well, you know about the new Vermeer up for sale, from an unknown private collector and an unnamed auction house. Katie and I are basically just trying to follow some leads that will show how the international art market reacts and works when something this big comes along.”
         “Oh, it’s big all right,” said Kiley. “Certainly the biggest story since I’ve been here.”
         “So, Interpol has been monitoring the sale?” asked Katie, who had flipped open her notebook but, as David had asked, kept her recorder in her briefcase.
         “With something this big, yes, routinely.”
         “And do you have any, uh, inkling that there’s anything illegal going on?”
         “Not so far.  I mean, silent collectors hire people all the time to sell their paintings through auction houses or they just sell them back and forth between each other. All the big collectors know one another, and there are always rumors going around. What makes this event interesting is that it is a Vermeer, not just because it’s an unknown Vermeer, or maybe a forgery, but because it might be a stolen Vermeer. In fact, it may be the Vermeer called "The Concert" that was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston eight years ago.”
         David and Katie looked at each other in shock, then said in near unison, “Somebody stole a Vermeer from a museum eight years ago?”
         “Yep, was part of a heist of thirteen pieces that together were worth about half a billion dollars. There’s still a $5 million reward being offered for information leading to the return of the Vermeer and the other works. But no one’s ever tried to ransom the painting in all that time.”
         “Which means what?” asked Katie.
         “Probably that it’s in a private collection somewhere, right?” said David.
         “Probably,” said Kiley. “Art thieves do not go and hang what they steal in their rumpus room for everyone to see.”
         “But collectors do?” asked Katie.
         “Some do, if they think they’re absolutely secure.”
         “You mean like Dr. No?” asked Katie, who was a big fan of James Bond movies.
         Kiley laughed. “Yeah, sort of. Dr. No—the movie came out in 1962, I think—had a scene in which Dr. No had a Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington hung in his underwater lair. Nobody in the scene said anything, but Bond seemed to recognize that the painting was one that had been stolen a year before from London’s National Gallery.”
         “In reality, did they ever get the Goya back?” asked David.
         “Yeah, turned out an 81-year-old retired bus driver named Bunton stole it because he feared a collector might send the painting to America. He found out the Gallery turned off its alarm system at three in the morning, so the place could be cleaned, then he broke in through a bathroom window and swiped the painting, frame and all. Four years later Bunton told the police the canvas was rolled up in a luggage office in a London train station.  A few weeks later he gave himself up, but was only prosecuted for not returning the frame. They could never prove he stole the painting.”
         “So no collector ever got his hands on it?” asked David.
         “Nope. But in the case of the stolen Vermeer and the other paintings from the Gardner Museum, they had to be fenced somewhere, or the heist was ordered by one or more collectors. We’re still on the case worldwide.”
         “Any leads on that one?”
         “I can’t give you specifics but, to tell the truth, there’s not much to go on.  I can say that you might want to follow your nose and see what you can find out about Russian and Chinese oligarchs. The Saudi princes have been known to hire professionals to steal specific works of art.  The Japanese are pretty much out of the market at this level by now. You heard about the sale of the Van Gogh to a Japanese nutcase named Saito?”
         Katie and David nodded.
       “Clearly,” Kiley went on, “except for the ridiculously well-endowed Getty Museum in Malibu, none of the major museums in the world have the budget for these kinds of Old Master paintings.”
         “What about the Nazi connection?” asked Katie.
         Kiley smirked a little and said, “We’re not seeing too many Nazis around anymore with caches of art work. But there is still a lot of what they stole from all over Europe in private collections. Some of it is in museums, especially the art plundered from Jewish collectors, which shows up for sale or as a donation now and then. We work with the museums on that, if asked. Sometimes, if someone can prove provenance, the piece is returned, even if it’s been hanging in a museum for forty years.  All the lost or stolen pieces are on a data base tracked by an organization called the Arts Loss Register.”
         Katie was riffling her notes, then said, “Correct me if I’m wrong here, but what you’re telling us is that this Vermeer sale could be perfectly legitimate, as long as the seller can show provenance and where the painting was all these years.”
         Kiley nodded.
         “Or,” Katie continued, “it might be art that was stolen a long time ago from any number of sources, including the Gardner Museum.”
         “Well,” said Kiley, “the only way they could possibly sell the Gardner piece, which is so well known and documented, is for the ransom money.  Otherwise it would have to stay hidden in a collector’s cave or vault. So, the title of the Gardner work was The Concert, and the Vermeer up for sale is called The Chemist. But at this point, who really knows? It could be a fake.”
         “Or maybe in Dr. No’s lair?” said David.
         “I seem to recall he didn’t make it out of his lair in the movie. Neither did the Goya.”
         “Good villains always come back. Like Blofeld, the Joker and Lex Luthor.”         Kiley forced a smile and said, “You see too many movies, or read too many comics, for a detective. Well, are we done here?”
        Katie and David left Kiley’s office and repaired to the coffee shop for lunch, a BLT for her, meatloaf for him. Both left the fries untouched.
         “Kiley doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,” said David.
         “Not a fun guy. Do you think we got anything useful from him?”
         “Hard to say. I thought the stolen Vermeer info could be of help and I could sure use the five million bucks.”
         “Any other ideas?”
         David stirred his coffee. “Not one, but I’ll keep asking around.  Someone’s gotta know something about someone in an industry that sounds as devious as the art world sounds.”
         “O.K., you keep looking under rocks and I’ll dig some more among the more respectable people in the art world. I know some of the art critics from magazines and newspapers.  I’ll see what they might know.”