Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• The New York City Wine & Food Festival is underway, although if you haven't secured tickets by now, you can forget about attending any of the events. [GS]
• What should Andre Balazs call the Standard's Boom Boom Room now that legal issues have forced a name change? "Mile High Club" gets one vote. [NYT]
• Buddha Bar has been sued over 400K in unpaid legal bills. [Eater]
• There's a pasta renaissance taking place in the city, apparently. [NYP]
• A Q&A with Katie Lee Joel, who has a new cookbook (and who says she'd be just as well known today even if she'd never married Billy Joel). [TONY]
• The Times Magazine's "food issue" is now online. [NYT]

• The club atop Andre Balazs' Standard Hotel won't be known as the Boom Boom Room for much longer. It looks like it will be renamed "QT" instead, possibly because another venue by the same name raised objections. In other Standard news, the as-yet unopened bar across from the Boom Boom Room is going to sport a plunge pool and condom machine. [BlackBook, GS]
• Former Fiamma chef Fabio Trabocchi has been tapped as the new executive chef of the Four Seasons. He's succeeding Christian Albin, who died in June. [NYT]More

• Openings: Gansevoort 69 opened today in the meatpacking space formerly occupied by Florent. And Motorino's first Manhattan outpost is now open in was once Una Pizza Napoletana. A few more openings today are here.
• Also open, but just for private parties for the time being: The Boom Boom Room, the new bar on the 18th-floor of Andre Balazs' Standard Hotel, which will open to the public on September 22. [DBTH, UrbanDaddy]
• Michael Psilakis and Donatella Arpaia are parting ways at Mia Dona. [Eater]
• Times Square's era of sleeze may soon make a return. The Box, the club co-owned by Simon Hammerstein, takes over China Club for two weeks next month to create Club Purgatorio, a "multi-level world of macabre fantasy." [GS]
• Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had lunch today at Il Mulino. In case you're wondering, the duo dined on "fish, pasta and salad." [NYT]
• Last night wasn't a great one for John Mayer. It seems he was forced to flee GoldBar after a guy at the bar was stabbed in stomach. [Page Six]

Christine Quinn has been slacking, clearly. This week the City Council speaker denounced the nudie show at the Standard Hotel, a faux scandal cooked up by the tabloids during a slow news week, and one that wasn't even newsworthy considering the existence of the sex shows —and the fact it was largely a publicity stunt to drum up interest in the hotel—were reported, like, ages ago. More

The Standard's campaign to make the hotel synonymous with sex appears to be backfiring. The Post caught on to shenanigans over the weekend, and in an "exclusive" today, breaks the big news that some of the Standard's neighbors in the meatpacking district are being routinely exposed to hanky-panky in the hotel's windows. And some of the witnesses to these acts have been innocent children! Even more outrageous: The hotel even appears to be encouraging this behavior on its own website! More

The Standard Is as Fleshy as Ever | Andre Balazs' quest to make the Standard the official hotel of visiting nudists seems to be paying off. (Either that or the hotel's adult-themed promo campaign continues.) A blogger spotted a naked man in the window over the weekend, and it didn't require much waiting around either: "It took less than 20 minutes into my first visit to the High Line, on Sunday, to capture it," he says. [Restlus via Curbed]

Andre Balazs Would Like You to Put Your Shorts Back On | Hotel owner Andre Balazs has been busy the last few weeks trying to convince people to strip naked at his Standard Hotel. Today the mini-chain launched a line of swimwear with Quiksilver. The boardshorts are supposedly designed for "late-night impromptu pool parties" and will be sold via "high-tech vending machines." But does this mean the hotel's l'âge nu is finished? Developing! [Cool Hunting]

• Is Andre Balazs the latest man to fall victim to Kelly Bensimon's feminine charms? Life & Style reports the hotelier and the "housewife" were seen getting cozy in Miami recently. [L&S]
• Kiefer Sutherland is in the clear. Prosecutors have dropped charges against him in connection with his assault on Jack McCollough back in May, since the designer has proved to be an "uncooperative witness." [NYDN]
• Mischa Barton is still in the hospital and may lose the role on the TV show that she was supposed to start filming this week. So what made her snap? In addition to all the drug stuff, she may be suffering from body image issues, too. [Sun, People]
• Ruth Madoff was supposedly spotted at LaGuardia en route to visit her husband in jail. And she was supposedly wearing ripped jeans, too. [P6]More

Remember about a month ago when people reported seeing couples having wild sex in the windows of the new Standard Hotel? Those couples that managed to cover every possible sexual preference (men/women, men/men, women/women), and were almost always described as gorgeous by passerby? Just in case it wasn't clear that it was all part of an elaborate viral marketing campaign by hotelier (and hottie) Andre Balazs—conveniently timed to coincide with the opening of the hotel's new bar and restaurant in early June—comes a post on the hotel's official blog, which not only touts the "floor to ceiling glass windows" that "offer direct views to your most intimate moments," but also asks "amateur pornographers" to send in their "most erotic photos shot at The Standard" or upload them to Facebook: More

• Danny Meyer's latest outpost, the concession stand in Central Park called Public Fare, officially opens its takeout window tomorrow. [Eater, GS]
• The paper is off the windows at the Standard Grill, the new resto inside Andre Balazs's Standard hotel. Grub Street snapped some pics through the glass. [GS]
• Geoffrey Zakarian has had some trouble as of late, but he has two projects to look forward to: Lamb's Club at Vikram Chatwal's hotel on East 44th, which opens in September (with a bar by David Rabin and Will Regen); and he's also taking over The Emery Bar at The Benjamin hotel next year. [Crain's]
• A sneak peek at Charlie Palmer's new Aureole at One Bryant Park. [Eater]More

Most people were pretty pleased when Andre Balazs's Standard hotel opened in the meatpacking district late last year. One person who reportedly wasn't: designer Diane von Furstenberg, who, it's said, was a little miffed that hotel guests would now be able to look out of their windows and down into her glassy penthouse apartment atop the DVF store around the corner. Balazs downplayed any reports of tension. (They'd "share views of each other," the hotelier explained.) But we can now see why she may not have been so thrilled by her new neighbor. Judging by these hi-res photos taken by a random hotel guest who uploaded them to Flickr—and didn't know what he was taking pictures of—the view isn't half bad.

• The bistro inside Andre Balazs's Standard Hotel will be called the Standard Grill and will probably open its doors "in the next couple of weeks." [Eater]
• A Q&A with Michael Psilakis of Anthos and Kefi fame. [RG]
• Frank Bruni checks in on Sue Torres's Mexican spot Sueños. [NYT]
• Eight bars that provide free food along with the drinks. [TONY]
• For $105, Morimoto will provide you with sushi and sake "while cruising New York Harbor on an 80-foot schooner." Sounds like a blast. [GS]
• Everything you were told about eating healthy was probably wrong. [NYDN]
• Don't forget that tomorrow is National Donut Day! Both Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme have specials in honor of the grand occasion, naturally. [ML]

• A summer bar preview and a roundup of happy-hour specials. [AMNY, NYP]
• The restaurant at the Andre Balazs's Standard Hotel doesn't debut until June, but the outdoor patio—which serves food—has opened. [GS]
• More photos of Locanda Verde, which is now in the hands of Andrew Carmellini, NYC's "best young Italian chef," according to David Chang. [GS, P6]
• The price of beer and wine may go up if Washington gets its way. [NYP]
• Speaking of wine, now isn't such a bad time to be investing in it, FYI. [NYT]
• A recap (and photos) from last night's Taste of the Nation event. [Metromix]

If Michelle Obama could be forgiven for feeling a little competitive toward France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, especially when it comes to matters of fashion and all-round feminine allure, we think it's safe to say that this morning, Michelle will be feeling glad that her vanity, as far as we know, stops short of making sex tapes. Yes, a burglar has stolen a cache of "highly intimate" videos and photographs featuring Carla with her ex-boyfriend/baby daddy Raphaël Enthoven (who, for those who like to keep track of European affairs, she stole from his then-wife, novelist Justine Levy, whose father, philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, is reportedly winning the heart of wealthy fashion plate Daphne Guinness away from Andre Balazs). Police in Paris are hoping to catch the thief before any images hit the web; the web, obviously, hopes the opposite.

Graydon Carter, Robert De Niro, and Ron Perelman hosted a Vanity Fair-sponsored dinner at the State Supreme Court House last night to celebrate the opening of the Tribeca Film Festival. They were joined by Carter and De Niro's wives (Anna Scott Carter and Grace Hightower) and Tribeca Film Fest co-founders Craig Hatkoff and Jane Rosenthal, as well as a long list of guests, including Bono and Ali Hewson, Kanye West,  Diane von Furstenberg, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Tory Burch and Lyor Cohen, André Leon Talley, Fran Lebowitz, Spike Lee ... (continued)More