Allison Tibaldi
Allison Tibaldi is a travel and food writer who grounds destination coverage in first-person experience, family dynamics, and detailed eating and drinking recommendations. She has been a full-time freelance travel and food writer for 15 years and has 20 years of experience specializing in culinary, family, and luxury travel. Her work spans Italy, New England, the Caribbean, and a broad mix of resorts, cruises, and urban restaurant scenes for Insider and a range of other travel publications.
Restaurant guides and urban food coverage
Tibaldi’s food coverage is anchored by extensive restaurant and bar guides that read like lived-in maps of a city’s dining scene. For Insider, she has written lists of 12 restaurants near Broadway and other theaters that cover everything from gourmet dining to slow-cooked barbecue for pre- and post-show meals.
She also publishes broader roundups of places to eat and drink across New York City, highlighting street food, rooftop bars, vegan options, and Mexican restaurants as “can’t-miss” stops. In one Insider feature, she organizes 43 restaurants across all five boroughs, presenting them by cuisine and budget and drawing on long experience eating around the city. Her destination guides extend this restaurant-forward lens beyond New York, as in a comprehensive Insider travel guide to Boston that pairs flight, hotel, and activity advice with specific eateries. Across these pieces, her distinguishing trait is the combination of granular venue detail with simple, direct explanations of why each spot earns a place in her rotation.
Family travel essays and multigenerational trips
A recurring strand in Tibaldi’s work is family travel, where she uses her own household as the frame for service journalism about how trips actually unfold. In Insider, she has written about taking her 30-year-old son on a vacation to Hawaii, explaining the ground rules they set in advance to keep the trip enjoyable for both of them.
She revisits Hawaii in a story about renewing wedding vows for a 30th anniversary, showing how a resort handled planning at no extra cost and what that meant for the experience. In another Insider essay, she breaks down the decision to send her American children to a day camp in France that cost about $10 a day, describing both the budget and the language-learning payoff. Outside Insider, her FamilyVacationist pieces focus on resorts that work particularly well for kids, including roundups of family properties in Florida, the Northeast, and all-inclusive resorts where nonstop activities and strong food programs keep children engaged.
Together, these stories distinguish her as a writer who treats family logistics and emotional dynamics as central to a trip, rather than background details.
Italian food, wine, and cultural travel
Italy is one of Tibaldi’s core beats, and she approaches it through both travel itineraries and close attention to regional food and wine.
Insider’s author page lists Italy among her primary beats, alongside New England and the Caribbean. For Insider, she has written about visiting Sicily after dozens of trips to Italy, distilling five specific changes she would make next time, from skipping overly touristy stops to adjusting how she spends time in Southern Italy. Her work for Appetito Magazine deepens this focus on Italian cuisine, with features on authentic Northern Italian food at Denver’s Barolo Grill and Italian-inspired dishes at Venice Beach Club in Los Angeles.
She profiles Bona Furtuna’s Sicilian olive oil and pasta products, and covers how Oceania’s Allura uses an olive oil concierge and traditional recipes to raise the standard of dining at sea.
Other Appetito pieces guide readers through Boston’s North End for a “taste of Italy without your passport,” explore an “A Tavola” dinner series featuring the cuisine of Umbria, report on the Boston Wine & Food Festival’s Italian programming, and explain the ritual of aperitivo in Milan. Across these outlets, she stands out for treating Italian food culture as a travel lens, using specific dishes, producers, and dining rituals to explain why particular places matter.
Cruises, coastal towns, and all-inclusive escapes
Another through-line in Tibaldi’s coverage is how people actually spend money and time on cruises, coastal towns, and all-inclusive stays.
For Insider, she has reviewed an eight-day luxury small-ship cruise to the Baja California peninsula that cost $7,000 per person, detailing the included kayaking, snorkeling, lectures by naturalists, and multicourse meals that justified the price. In a separate Insider piece, she analyzes an Alaska cruise initially priced at $799 that ultimately cost $2,800 once excursions and extras were added, breaking down where the budget went. Her travel reporting also includes a comparison between the Hamptons and Madison, Connecticut, in which she explains why she skips the Hamptons in favor of Madison’s beaches, seafood restaurants, and year-round appeal.
She writes about upgrading to premium economy on an eight-hour flight to Italy for an extra $200, describing the food, wine, and service that made the upgrade worthwhile. In her FamilyVacationist work, she surveys all-inclusive and family resorts in Florida and the broader U.S., paying close attention to dining quality alongside kids’ programming.
These stories combine cost breakdowns, concrete descriptions of food and amenities, and clear judgments about value, marking her as a reporter who treats price and experience as inseparable.
Across outlets including Insider, CNN, USA Today, Lonely Planet, Travel Channel, HGTV, FamilyVacationist, Travel Squire, Shermans Travel, and others, Tibaldi’s consistent focus is the intersection of travel, food, and how real families and travelers use destinations. Her pieces are distinguished by first-hand participation, straightforward language, and a bias toward specific restaurants, dishes, and activities over abstract description.
4 more food journalists.
Aaron Guerrero
Aaron Guerrero is head of the digital department at Miami’s Community Newspapers, where he pairs restaurant coverage with community-facing content. He focuses on how Miami-area restaurants evolve, celebrate, and experiment through new concepts, menus, and neighborhood-focused dining experiences. He reports on restaurant openings, such as an Italian food hall at Plaza Coral Gables, new executive lunch menus, and wood-fired Latin steakhouse brunches, explaining what sets each venue apart. He also covers awards, like a Wine Spectator honor for an Italian chophouse, and events that turn dining rooms into social hubs. His bylines extend to features on sports-themed gatherings, civic renamings, local visits to restaurant programs, sponsored community pieces, and official notices. His work is straightforward and descriptive, helping readers and local businesses connect around specific openings, promotions, and dining experiences.
Aarron Fleming
Aarron Fleming reports on how courts, jails and public safety systems work over time. He is a reporter at The Daily Memphian covering public safety, the local court system, suburban news and business developments in North Mississippi. His work follows trials, sentencing, appeals, plea deals and judicial decisions, including major cases tied to Tyre Nichols and rapper Young Dolph. He also covers jail conditions, inmate deaths, crime data, prosecution units, trafficking, shootings and public-order incidents. His suburban reporting examines cannabis businesses, restaurant openings and how commercial growth affects communities such as Olive Branch. Fleming previously covered education in the same newsroom. He uses clear, unadorned prose to explain legal steps, deadlines, institutional problems and the political, commercial and community effects of public-safety decisions.
Alana Al-Hatlani
Alana Al-Hatlani is a food writer and editor who treats recipes, restaurants, and food features as ways to explore culture, community, and the business of eating. She works on the food team at Southern Living, overseeing and contributing to print recipes and reported features. Her pastry-focused, restaurant-tested perspective comes from time in restaurant and bakery kitchens. She helps plan and write monthly food packages, including “The South’s Most Treasured Desserts,” and wrote “8 Summer Recipes Our Editors Make Every Year.” She also writes recipe tips, ingredient explainers, restaurant guides, and reported stories about workers, owners, and communities. Her subjects include regional specialties, dining scenes, kitchen basics, and food industries. Her work has appeared with OpenTable and Yahoo. She reports on the ground, explains techniques clearly, and connects specific dishes and places to larger stories about food and livelihood.
Alana Edgin
Alana Edgin is a business reporter whose strongest focus is food, restaurants and consumer-facing businesses. She works at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and has also had work syndicated across AOL and Yahoo News. She covers new openings, closings, expansions and franchise growth, along with retail, health, services, corporate news, data incidents, business support programs and sponsorships. Her reporting includes detailed roundups of new restaurants and businesses, coverage of El Pollo Loco’s opening, and stories on burger trucks, dessert shops, Vietnamese sandwich restaurants and gourmet markets. She also contributes to food and drink reviews, including fall coffee and jerky comparisons. Edgin reports with practical “what, when, where” details, structured comparisons and clear explanations of how offers, partnerships and business changes affect consumers and the local economy.