“You’re asking me for advice to give to your friends in Delhi, who are going to give that advice to the tandoor guys there who have never roasted a turkey in their cavernous, wickedly hot oven before? Here’s my advice: They’ve cooked a lot of chickens. Tell them it’s a really big chicken. Cut and run.”

The New York Times just announced that they have tapped deputy managing editor Jon Landman to replace Sam Sifton as the Times culture editor. Sifton replaced Frank Bruni as the Times restaurant critic last month. In his memo to staff Bill Keller called the appointment a "no-brainer," saying that "after more than four years overseeing the integration of the print and Web newsrooms and the spectacular flowering of journalistic innovation that accompanied it, Jon yearns to get back to running coverage, to refresh his roots." Full memo below: (more...)

The featured diplomatic mot du jour yesterday was, in some circles, less special pardon than balkanization. And while both referred to journalists, only the latter, evoked by the New York Times' William Grimes in the New York Observer, dealt with food. The event of such geopolitical import? Why, only the pending announcement of a successor to fabulous Frank Bruni -- colorful critic extraordinaire, populist man of the people -- who is just weeks away from "hanging up his napkin," as NYT executive editor Bill Keller ultimately put it an internal memo knighting culture editor Sam Sifton as the man for the job. The memo called the choice of Sifton "both obvious and eccentric"; the same could have been said for the 2005 tapping of Bruni, then head of the Times' Rome bureau by way of Washington DC. (more...)

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller announced today that culture editor Sam Sifton will replace Frank Bruni's as the Times' restaurant critic. Keller announced the decision in in an email earlier today.

has run two departments exceptionally well, and nobody would be surprised to see him running something in the future. For now, though, his running will be on a treadmill at the gym. After some overdue vacation and a few weeks of warmup eating, Sam will take over the critic’s chair in October. (more...)