Grub Street

Food writer, former restaurant critic, and noted Thanksgiving expert Sam Sifton has been appointed to food editor at the New York Times, a move he notes on Twitter makes him the first to hold the role since the Craig Claiborne era. Sifton currently presides over the recently-launched NYT Cooking section, a multimedia-heavy approach to home meals and entertaining, and in addition to renaming the paper's "Dining" section to the more straightforward "Food," there are other changes ahead: Current section editor Susan Edgerley will be the new deputy editor, and the combined new app-and-print section will "provide a central location for all Times readers’ cooking and dining needs." The full memo (via Capital) sent out by executive editor Dean Baquet is straight ahead.

Looks like Columbia Street is about to get an outpost of Toby's Public House, the well-loved South Slope bar and wood-fired pizzeria that also has a Kenmare Street location. The restaurant's reps appeared on the agenda for a community board meeting held earlier this week to score a liquor license in the former Caselnova space, which was more recently home to panini café La Bottega. In addition to Pok Pok, which will soon occupy three storefronts total along the South Brooklyn block, Columbia Street is now home to the just-opened, Instagram-ready bar and restaurant Orchard, and is about to get its own hot-dog-centric bar. [Related]

Five Barclays food-service workers have filed a lawsuit claiming that employees at the venue's restaurants inflicted discrimination, name-calling, and other abuse, including banishing them at posh venues like the Calvin Klein Courtside Club and the Jay Z-owned 40/40 Club "to ensure that they remain out of the sight of customers." Anthony Peterkin, a cook who's blind in one eye, says two managers gave him names like "Cyclops" and "one-eyed guy," while Erick Silverman, who has both cerebral palsy and a disorder called rhinophyma, claims in the $5 million suit that a manager mocked his hand tremors and insulted him in other, even more tasteless ways.

Chika Tillman and Don Tillman say their forthcoming West Village ChikaLicious Dessert Club will open in the old Café Henri on October 1. It will be open seven days a week and have separate bakery sections and a sitdown bar, and the format will serve as the "prototype" for the "national rollout of ChikaLicious," says Don Tillman. With international stores already in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Seoul, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Jakarta, and Tokyo, Tillman says, "We started small, and now it is time to let it fly." The home of the Cronut-esque "Dough'Ssant" and Speculoos cinnamon-butter buns is also planning a Williamsburg location, set to open November 1, 2015, in an as-yet-unidentified boutique hotel. [Bedford + Bowery, Related]

Because of ongoing nastiness related to the expired meat scandal, McDonald's stores in Japan have mostly stopped serving chicken altogether, and to get customers through the doors, it's now offering four-piece packs of what it calls Tofu Shinjo Nuggets, vegetable-studded patties concocted from a mix of soybeans, onions, carrots, and shinjo, a sort of starch–fish paste concoction. The nuggets are produced in Japanese factories and come with a subtle ginger-flavored dipping sauce. "Because it isn't meat, it tastes a bit different. It's a bit softer," a spokesperson says. The Shinjo Nuggets were in the works, the company adds, long before allegations that a major fast-food supplier mixed expired meat with fresher meat, plus other unsavory things. This presumably just sped things up a bit. [WSJ, Related]