Cityfile: New York's Most Notable and Influential

• The week in restaurant reviews: In his second outing as Times dining critic, Sam Sifton gives Marea a very enthusiastic three stars; New York magazine's Adam Platt is a bit disappointed by Joseph Leonard and Civetta (and gives each a single star); Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton checks out the Manhattan outpost of Motorino and leaves happy; Time Out's Jay Cheshes heads to Monkey Bar and finds the food has improved; and Gael Greene pays a visit Abe & Arthur's.
• The city is now suing the LeRoy family, the current operators of Tavern on the Green, in an effort to regain control over the restaurant's name. [Crain's]
• Openings: Brinkley's, the new restaurant by Tom and Anthony Martignetti in the former Bar Martignetti space, opens to the public next week. The Scottish restaurant Highlands opens in the West Village this Friday.More

Club Owners Get (Even More) Desperate | If the piece in last Sunday's New York Times about the state of NYC nightlife didn't convince you that times are tough for club owners, look no further than this press release from JE Englebert, the publicity-obsessed owner of Suzy Wong, and Noel Ashman, the man who ran the Plumm until it went down in flames a couple of months ago. The duo say they plan to work the door at "a competitor's club" this coming weekend. But at least they're preparing for the future, right? The press release is below. More

Does Ivy Supersonic strike you as the sort of person who would have fallen victim to Bernie Madoff? Not so much? Perhaps that explains why her attempt to tape-record Madoff's sentencing yesterday didn't turn out so well and she got caught in the act. Ivy Silberstein, as she's known in real life, brought a "recording device" into the courthouse, a violation of the rules, obviously. But someone apparently spotted her and Judge Denny Chin ordered that court officers seize the device and delete the material before returning it.More

Happy Birthday | Vincent D'Onofrio turns 50 today. Mr. Mike Tyson is turning 43. Italian fashion heiress Allegra Versace is 23. American Idol's Fantasia Barrino is turning 25. Lizzy Caplan of Mean Girls and True Blood is 27. Nightlifer Noel Ashman, the former owner of the Plumm, is turning 39. Famed conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen is 51. Matisyahu is 30. And actor/comedian David Alan Grier turns 54 today.

• Hotel Griffou opens in the old Marylou's space this evening. [NYT, GS]
• New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni serves up a one-star review to a "somewhat confused and confusing" Rye in today's paper. [NYT]
• Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton has very good things to say about Aldea. [BN]
• Rumor has it Café Gitane will open at the Jane Hotel this fall. [TFB]
• Speaking of the Jane, here's another photo tour of the new bar. [Gothamist]
• Did you know that restaurants make more money when they remove dollar signs from the menu? Or that chefs place the dishes they want to sell on the center of the inside right page of their menu? It's true. [Baltimore Sun via GS] More

It's never a good sign when a club closes down and no one notices (or cares), nor is it especially encouraging that a venue that once boasted about its long list of celebrity investors is forced to announce the news with a homemade sign taped to the door. It isn't clear why The Plumm closed its doors a few days ago. (Some sort of "legal problem," apparently.) But if it falling off the radar screen a few years ago has led to financial problems, co-owner Noel Ashman might want to take a page from Nikki Beach in Midtown, which seems to have come up with a surefire way to stay alive during the economic downturn: It's now hosting swinger parties for "sexy couples" and single women. Be advised, gentlemen: No leather pants with unbuttoned silk shirts, please.

Happy Birthday | Moody Law & Order star Vincent D'Onofrio turns 49 today. Plumm owner Noel Ashman turns 38. Boxer Mike Tyson is 42. And American Idol's Fantasia Barrino (remember her?) turns 24.