Avril Treasure
Avril Treasure is the Editor for Time Out Sydney, with a core focus on food and drink coverage that turns the city’s restaurants, bars and cafés into clear, usable choices for readers. Her work is distinguished by detailed, critic-led guides that organise busy dining and drinking scenes into ranked lists, neighbourhood roundups and occasion-based picks. Across these pieces, she treats eating and going out as everyday decisions, combining practical information with a strong sense of place and atmosphere.
Best restaurants and bars in Sydney
Much of Treasure’s recent work is built around comprehensive guides to the city’s restaurant and bar landscape, with an emphasis on “best of” lists that help readers navigate where to book next.
She writes major pillars such as lists of the best restaurants in the Sydney CBD, which break down options in the city centre by style, price and occasion. She also leads city-wide rankings like the best restaurants in Sydney right now, positioning each venue within the broader dining scene and highlighting where to go for power lunches, date nights and degustation experiences. Her coverage extends to coastal neighbourhoods, where she compiles roundups of the best restaurants in Bondi and surfaces local favourites in a crowded market. On the bar side, she authors recurring guides to the best bars in Sydney, updating them to reflect new openings and enduring institutions, and explicitly frames these lists as critic picks for where to drink now.
She also slices the bar beat by use case, for example curating the best first date bars in Sydney, with choices tailored to intimacy, romance and easing first-date nerves. Alongside these lists, she profiles individual venues, including beer-focused spots like Batch Brewing Co, where she drills into the beer offering, atmosphere and practical details for visitors. Her food writing is not limited to new openings: she has covered long-running institutions such as Australia’s oldest continuously owned Italian restaurant on its 70th anniversary, treating heritage and continuity as part of the dining story.
Coffee, casual dining and neighbourhood favourites
Treasure’s food beat includes everyday rituals such as coffee and casual meals, which she covers with the same structured, guide-driven approach.
In her best coffee in the Sydney CBD piece, she surveys cafés across the city centre, spotlighting espresso bars and sit-down spots alike while pointing out standout roasters, signature drinks and takeaway options. In CBD restaurant guides, she folds in accessible, mid-priced venues alongside high-end destinations, reflecting how people actually eat across lunch breaks, after-work outings and casual dinners. Her individual restaurant reviews, such as coverage of Neptune’s Grotto, combine concise descriptions of the menu and drinks list with details on price point and opening hours, making each review a practical reference for planning.
Across these pieces she consistently anchors recommendations in location, cost and vibe, so that readers can quickly match a venue to their own time, budget and mood.
Things to do and city-wide guides
While food and drink are her core beat, Treasure also contributes to broader city guides that connect dining with culture, nightlife and experiences. She co-authors large-format features such as the 52 best things to do in Sydney, where restaurants and bars sit alongside galleries, attractions and outdoor activities in a single, ranked itinerary. In multi-author editor projects, she is cited as a key local voice in guides to the best Mexican eateries in Sydney and to the most reliable dancefloors in the city, showing her role in shaping both food and nightlife coverage. As Editor for Time Out Sydney, she oversees editorial direction across food and drinks, arts and culture, news, lifestyle and sport, coordinating the way these strands are presented to readers and ensuring that city guides feel cohesive rather than fragmented. These responsibilities give her work a city-wide lens: restaurant lists, bar roundups and things-to-do features fit together as parts of a larger plan for how people spend time in the city.
Branded content and wider media work
Treasure’s path at Time Out began in the creative solutions team in August 2022, where she wrote branded content and worked across editorial before moving into dedicated food and drink roles. She later became the Food & Drink Writer in March 2023 and the Food & Drink Editor in January 2024, before stepping into the Editor position.
Her branded work includes advertising features such as coverage of the Toyota “Baaalllllll Pit” activation around the AFL Grand Finale, where she translates a sponsor’s brief into a playful, event-focused story that still reads like a Time Out experience guide. Outside Time Out, she has more than a decade of experience as a writer and editor across print and digital, covering food, drink, news, travel, home and culture. Her past bylines span outlets including The Saturday Telegraph, Concrete Playground, Urban List NZ and Broadsheet, and she appears regularly as a monthly guest talking food, drink and city life on ABC Radio Sydney.
This wider work reinforces a through-line: whether in editorial, branded content or broadcast, Treasure’s focus is on helping audiences decide where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy their city, with clear, concrete recommendations at the centre.
4 more food journalists.
Adam Chandler
Adam Chandler stands out for treating food as a business and culture story, not a lifestyle beat. He writes a food column for The Wall Street Journal, where he uses familiar dishes and trends to explain pricing, branding, consumer behavior, demographics and shifting tastes. He has covered chicken thighs, Diet Coke versus Coke Zero, the rise of the $100 hot dog, regional American dishes, the U.S. Open food scene and hard-to-get restaurant reservations. His reporting also spans features, video pieces and audio conversations, all in plain, reported prose that focuses on fast food, chains, branded products, access and the real-world marketplace for eating out. He draws on a long career in national magazines and newspapers, plus books on fast food and work, to give his coverage historical context.
Ash Jurberg
Ash Jurberg weaves travel, food, and family stories into personal narratives that show how specific dishes shape relationships and daily life. He is a freelance journalist focused on travel, gastronomy, and family dynamics, with regular contributions to Allrecipes. There he writes personal essays on how culinary traditions define families, treating home cooking as a lived practice and emphasizing the rituals around particular dishes. His travel and lifestyle work links destinations with the flavors, street foods, and dining traditions that define them, including a piece on El Salvador’s rise as a travel destination and pupusas as its national dish. On Allrecipes he also covers simple, flexible recipes that fit busy routines, such as Nigella Lawson’s three-ingredient all-day dish. His voice blends anecdote, reported detail, and light humor informed by standup and improv, and he has authored two books.
Bud Kennedy
Bud Kennedy is a long-time Star-Telegram columnist whose defining work is Eats Beat, a practical chronicle of Texas dining and community life. He has written the column in print since 1985 and online since 1992, producing more than 3,000 pieces on cafes, barbecue joints, burger spots and other everyday restaurants. He reports openings, closings, changes and deals with close attention to names, dates and what diners can expect next. His food coverage connects restaurant news to neighborhood change, tradition, development and economic growth. Kennedy also writes opinion columns on city growth, identity, history, sports, media, state politics and national conflict. His reporting draws on a 54-year newspaper career covering two Super Bowls, a presidential inauguration, seven national political conventions and 19 sessions of the Texas Legislature. He appears weekly on Inside Texas Politics and is a frequent broadcast guest and speaker.
Claire Sams
Claire Sams reports on how food, community and regional life connect for Region Canberra, treating food, clubs, courts and climate as parts of one regional story. She is a journalist for Region Canberra and also contributes reporting to About Regional. Her beat spans food and hospitality, community organisations, local services, courts, crime, environment and regional infrastructure. She covers accessible venues, local characters and gatherings, showing how food occasions and events link neighbours, visitors and regulars. She reports on clubs, services and traditions as core to everyday regional life, and covers serious court and crime matters with clear, direct detail on allegations, legal arguments and outcomes. Her environment and infrastructure stories follow climate, wildlife, tourism and major projects, using ground-level reporting to show how decisions and events affect people in the region.