Angela Lim
Angela Lim is a features reporter in The Seattle Times’ features department who covers breaking and trending news, consumer travel, local media and a wide range of community features from food to visual arts and the outdoors. Her food coverage is distinguished by a strong service lens, using restaurant guides, dessert roundups and event-based stories to help readers plan real outings rather than just read about them. Across her work, she treats food and culture as entry points into the broader experience of the city, pairing vivid description with practical details that make participation easy.
Food guides and neighborhood dining
Lim’s food writing focuses on accessible guides to specific places and experiences rather than abstract commentary, often organizing her coverage around a handful of venues that offer different ways into a neighborhood or theme.
In her guide to three restaurants at Alki, she frames the story around a beachside weekend lunch, highlighting distinct spots that give readers options for how they want to eat along the waterfront. The piece emphasizes what each restaurant offers and situates them within the setting of Alki, giving a sense of atmosphere alongside the food.
Her dessert coverage is similarly structured around discovery and utility, as in her story on dessert shops serving sundaes inspired by World Cup teams through a shared “passport” punch card.
She explains how the passport works, the number of participating shops, and the raffle prizes available once all stamps are collected, making the promotion easy for readers to understand and join. Details like the gift-card grand prize and additional smaller prizes show her attention to the mechanics of local promotions, not just the novelty of themed sundaes. This combination of clear how-to information and small-business spotlighting sets her apart from a generic food writer focused solely on taste or critique.
Festival coverage linking food and entertainment
Lim often approaches food as part of a larger event experience, covering festivals where eating is intertwined with music and entertainment. In her story on Bite of Seattle, she presents the music lineup as “just as delicious as the food,” signaling that the festival is about sensory abundance across multiple fronts. She includes concrete information such as dates, daily hours, location at Seattle Center, admission costs, and where to find more details, giving readers everything they need to attend.
By pairing logistical specifics with a playful framing of the lineup, she positions the festival as a full-day outing rather than a simple food tasting.
This event-focused approach shows how she uses food coverage to map out full experiences: where to go, when to arrive, what else is happening and how it all fits together. A generic reporter might mention the presence of food vendors in passing; Lim treats them as integral to the overall appeal and gives them equal narrative weight alongside the music programming.
Her work in this lane is well suited to stories where food is part of a larger cultural or entertainment offering.
Community culture and participatory events
Beyond food, Lim reports widely on community culture, including literary events and open mics that draw local writers and audiences. In her coverage of Seattle literary gatherings, she walks readers through multiple events, from intimate open mics in restaurants to staged programs at established venues. She describes the atmosphere of these spaces, the structure of the readings, and the cadence of the events, such as monthly schedules and typical time slots.
Her reporting on these literary events is highly participatory in tone: she notes sign-up procedures, age restrictions, and whether events are free, as well as where to find more information. By explaining how to get on the reading list, when doors open, and what the audience can expect, she lowers barriers to entry for people who might be curious but unfamiliar with the scene. This same service-forward instinct shows up in her food coverage, where she routinely includes how-to-join details, pricing notes and logistical guidance.
Broader features beat and reporting range
Lim describes her role as covering breaking and trending news, consumer travel, local media and community features across topics from food to visual arts and the outdoors. This breadth is reflected in the mix of stories under her byline, which span cultural events, local guides and quicker-turn pieces tied to what is happening in and around the city.
Her consumer travel coverage and local media features extend the same practical, reader-oriented style she uses in food, helping people navigate options and understand what different experiences offer.
Her prior work at other outlets includes reporting on policy-heavy subjects such as Texas legislation creating one of the country’s largest taxpayer-funded school voucher programs, showing she can handle complex political and education stories in addition to lifestyle features. That background gives her a grounding in hard-news reporting techniques that she brings to softer beats, particularly in stories where community initiatives, business promotions or cultural programming intersect with broader civic themes. Taken together, her portfolio marks her as a features reporter whose food stories sit within a larger commitment to making local life legible and inviting.
Lim’s tenure at The Seattle Times began with a summer internship, after which she moved into her current features role, building on formal training in journalism and ethnic or Asian American studies. This combination of newsroom experience and academic grounding informs her attention to community representation and accessibility across both her food writing and her wider coverage.
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.