Aly Walansky
Aly Walansky specializes in service-driven food coverage that connects cocktails, dining, and occasions, with a particular focus on guides that show readers how to celebrate, share, and ship meals and drinks. Her work at Forbes centers on practical, expert-driven roundups that translate the restaurant and cocktail world into concrete recommendations for everyday and special-occasion dining. With several decades of experience covering food and travel, she writes with the perspective of a long-time observer of how people eat, drink, and mark important moments.
Cocktails and occasion-driven dining
At Forbes, Walansky’s food beat narrows into a distinct focus on cocktails and dining experiences, reflected in pieces like her in-depth look at 20 variations on the classic martini, which breaks a familiar drink into a wide range of creative options for different palates and settings.
She also leans into calendar-driven coverage, such as her Mother’s Day gift guide highlighting the best meals that can be shipped directly to someone’s door, framing food as a way to connect across distance and make an occasion feel special. Her Thanksgiving coverage has explored why a virtual holiday meal can be the best way to celebrate family and express gratitude, again emphasizing formats - shipped dinners, remote gatherings, and restaurant-prepared menus - that make hosting more accessible. Across these stories, the through-line is clear: she uses cocktails and dining as vehicles for celebration, focusing on how logistics, ordering options, and menu choices can turn an ordinary day or a major holiday into a shared experience.
Roundups, restaurant features, and menu creativity
Walansky’s Forbes work is heavily list- and roundup-driven, often built around numbered collections that surface multiple ways to approach a single dish or category.
The martini piece is one example, organizing 20 distinct takes on a classic cocktail into a structured guide that encourages experimentation while keeping the drink recognizable. She has also produced roundups of enticing twists on classic crispy dishes, highlighting how chefs rework familiar formats into something new while staying rooted in comfort food.
Beyond multi-item lists, she profiles individual restaurants and their menus, as seen in features praised by operators who describe her coverage as capturing the spirit and concept behind their venues. These pieces typically spotlight signature dishes, the ethos behind a menu, and how a restaurant fits into broader dining trends, giving equal attention to what is being served and why it matters to guests.
Food and travel coverage across outlets
Outside Forbes, Walansky writes widely across food and travel publications, extending her beat from restaurant and cocktail coverage into home cooking, grocery shopping, and recipe development. She has worked as a professional writer and editor for around two decades, contributing to major food and lifestyle outlets where her work has included pieces on cooking techniques, kitchen tips, and travel experiences centered on what and where to eat. Professional profiles describe her as a food and travel writer whose work spans everything from everyday recipes to destination dining, reinforcing that her Forbes beat sits within a larger portfolio of food-focused service journalism. In addition, she runs a newsletter that shares current assignments, recently published pieces, and industry commentary, giving insight into her ongoing focus areas and the types of stories she is actively reporting.
Formats and approach
Walansky’s coverage is consistently service-oriented: she favors guides, gift lists, and roundups that tell readers exactly which meals, cocktails, restaurants, or products to choose for a given need or occasion. Holiday pieces like her Mother’s Day shipped-meals guides and virtual Thanksgiving coverage underscore her interest in the practical side of celebration - how to order, receive, and serve food that feels special, even when people are not gathering in the same place. Her roundups of multiple variations on a single drink or dish show a preference for structured comparison, making it easy to scan options and match them to different tastes, budgets, or settings. Restaurant and brand partners who share her articles highlight that she includes specific venues, meal delivery services, and products by name, indicating that her stories often blend trend and menu analysis with concrete recommendations for where to go and what to buy.
Across outlets, the consistent pattern is a practical, occasion-aware approach to food writing that treats cocktails, dishes, and destinations as tools to create experiences rather than just items on a menu.
4 more food journalists.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What's On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose food and leisure coverage is built around immersive, first-person reporting and concrete detail. He works at the Manchester Evening News, focusing on new restaurant and bar openings, regular food reviews, gig and event coverage, and issues affecting LGBTQ+ people. He treats restaurants, pubs, bars and experiences as stories about place, people and community, explaining what makes a venue different and how it fits into the local dining scene. His pieces cover pricing, service, atmosphere, crowds and concept, and he is willing to be critical when gimmicks undermine the experience. He writes character-led pub profiles, works shifts, joins treasure hunts and attends major cultural events, inviting readers to follow what he does and use his straightforward assessments to decide where to eat, drink and spend time.
Alice Lorenzato-Lloyd
Alice Lorenzato-Lloyd is editor at Secret Manchester, where she treats food as part of how people live in the city, not as an isolated subject. She covers restaurants, bars, street food and casual dining, linking new openings and food trends to neighbourhood change, local businesses and everyday routines. Her pieces focus on accessible spots, comfort dishes like pizza and tacos, and clear details of menus, presentation, atmosphere and practical information such as opening hours and booking. She often combines food, drink and live events, producing guides to venues for major sports tournaments and themed pop-ups as part of wider things to do. Alice also reports on hospitality business pressures, city-centre public spaces, charity initiatives, transport and infrastructure, always showing how food and drink fit into community and lifestyle stories. She previously wrote for other regional “Secret” sites as a staff writer and describes herself as a writer and food fanatic.
Amy Clarke
Amy Clarke stands out for turning food trends, sustainability and rising costs into practical guidance. She writes about changing tastes, new ingredients, formats and dining habits, as well as budget-friendly sustainable eating, nutrition, food shopping and the pressures extreme weather places on small food businesses. Her work includes forward-looking trend round-ups, advice on eating sustainably on a budget, cheaper alternatives to expensive superfoods and a report on how ice cream vans manage heat, logistics and profitability. She works as a multimedia reporter for News Shopper Series, with past work published in Sutton & Croydon Guardian, Yahoo News UK and The Conversation. Clarke combines reported features with clear explainers, expert voices and step-by-step advice. She uses plain language, specific examples and practical tips to show what food changes mean for readers and businesses.
Barra Best
Barra Best combines daily weather reporting with environmental documentaries for the BBC. He is a senior weather presenter, reporter and documentary maker, working across television, radio and online. His beat is weather and climate, including storms, heatwaves, record temperatures, changing seasons and their effects on communities, travel, agriculture, transport, outdoor work and food. He also covers biodiversity, wildlife, coastlines, rural communities and outdoor life. His programmes include Walk the Line, Weather Watchers, Coast Lives, Barra on the Foyle, Barra on the Bann, Barra’s Return of the Wild and Barra’s Wild Days Out. His reporting uses data, charts and clear explanations to connect science with daily life. He presents on location, interviews contributors and follows environmental stories over extended filming. He also hosts live events, panels, charity broadcasts and educational projects.