Celestina Blok
Celestina Blok turns food coverage into curated itineraries, using list-driven guides to show readers where to eat, drink, and explore through CultureMap Dallas’s food and drink section. Her work leans on roundups of weekly events, spotlight features on new restaurants, and destination pieces that link dining with travel. Across CultureMap’s city sites, she consistently ties food, drink, and place together so each story functions as a plan for a night out, a festival, or a themed trip.
Best food and drink events in Dallas this week
Blok’s most distinctive recurring format is the weekly “best food and drink events in Dallas this week” roundup, where she ranks and packages multiple happenings into a single guide. In one piece, a gelato party leads a list of seven food and drink events, using the headline structure “tops” to signal a marquee pick and then building out supporting options around it. Another recent column, framed with the phrase “This week in gluttony,” puts a mocktail party at the top of six food and drink events, again positioning one anchor event and surrounding it with tastings, specials, and pop-ups. These stories are service-driven: the format promises what is “best,” the timing is clearly tied to the coming week, and the emphasis stays on practical enjoyment - where to go, what’s happening, and why it stands out in the local calendar.
New restaurants and bar openings
Alongside events coverage, Blok contributes to CultureMap Dallas’s restaurants and bars stream with pieces on openings and dining news.
In a co-bylined story on the restaurant Mero Mero Tex Mex, she helps introduce a new spot by highlighting its fajita-focused menu and positioning it as a fresh option in a growing local dining landscape. The structure of that coverage blends a quick news hook - there is a new Tex-Mex restaurant - with descriptive detail about what it serves, giving readers both the fact of the opening and a snapshot of the experience. This kind of piece sits between hard news and lifestyle writing: it documents change on the dining scene while foregrounding specific dishes, atmospheres, and neighborhoods that define how and where people eat out.
Destination Dolly and other travel features
Blok extends her food sensibility into travel features, building itineraries that connect dining, culture, and place. In a “Destination Dolly” story, she lays out a pilgrimage from Dallas to Tennessee hot spots tied to Dolly Parton, shaping the article as a themed route with multiple stops rather than a single-venue review. The piece is pegged to a holiday weekend, showing how she uses the calendar not only for local events but also for planning getaways that readers can time around breaks and long weekends.
Her broader portfolio, which includes coverage of food and wine festivals and travel-centric dining stories, follows the same pattern: trips are organized around what to eat and drink, and landmarks are chosen for the experiences they offer as much as for their name recognition.
This week in gluttony: tone and format
Blok’s headlines and recurring phrases give a clear sense of tone, even when the underlying structure is disciplined and utilitarian. The “This week in gluttony” tag sets an indulgent, playful frame around straightforward service content, signaling that the reader is being invited to enjoy the abundance of options, not merely to be informed of them. Across her work, verbs like “tops” and constructions that promise “best” events or new places indicate a ranking and selection function, showing that she is not just listing everything happening but making choices about what is most noteworthy. Her articles sit firmly within lifestyle coverage, yet they are anchored by concrete details - dates, times, dishes, and destinations - that make each piece usable as a plan, whether for a single evening’s outing or for a longer trip built around food and drink.
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.