Charlie Hart
Charlie Hart is a food writer at Daily Hive, focused on restaurant news, food events, and menu launches across Calgary and Edmonton. Their coverage stands out for the way it combines fast-moving updates on openings and closures with citywide guides and hands-on taste tests of new and unusual dishes. The work sits at the intersection of local service journalism and trend reporting, giving a clear picture of what is new, notable, or at risk in the regional food scene.
Restaurant Openings, Closures, and Long-Running Spots
Hart closely tracks new restaurants, cafes, bakeries, bars, and grocery stores, often highlighting first or flagship locations in Calgary and Edmonton. Recent pieces cover everything from a world-renowned burger restaurant announcing its first Alberta location to a Canadian dessert spot known for Tanghulu opening its first Calgary shop. They report on major grocery moves as well, such as a huge No Frills store opening downtown and a nearly 100,000-square-foot grocery opening near Calgary, treating food retail as part of the dining landscape. Closures receive similar attention, with recurring roundups on restaurants that have shut their doors or are closing soon, and individual stories on beloved spots, vegan cafes, izakayas, and beer markets ending their run.
Alongside quick opening and closing alerts, Hart writes deeper features on long-standing venues and neighbourhood institutions.
One notable article traces how a Calgary diner operating for 70 years became a local legend, showing a willingness to go beyond headline news into the history and culture of a single restaurant. Profiles of notable Thai, Italian, and Latin American restaurants and their rise in the city emphasise what makes them “hot tickets” or landmarks rather than simply new additions.
This mix of list-driven updates and occasional features gives a nuanced view of the local food ecosystem, from brand-new concepts to places with long memories.
Food Festivals, Citywide Events, and Themed Campaigns
Hart regularly produces roundups of food events, treating festival and special-week programming as a core part of the beat.
They compile “can’t-miss” lists of Calgary and Edmonton food events for specific weeks or months, including summer and holiday seasons, helping map out the calendar for the cities’ restaurant and bar scenes. Taco-focused campaigns feature prominently, with coverage of Taco Week in both Calgary and Edmonton and festival-style food promotions where dozens of restaurants participate.
Hart also covers budget-friendly festivals, such as city-wide events offering dishes for just $10, and stink-themed or garlic-heavy festivals that lean into their own novelty.
Beyond recurring festivals, Hart tracks one-off themed events and collaborations that tie food to broader cultural moments. Coverage includes a Calgary steakhouse hosting a Taylor Swift-inspired dinner, blending pop culture and dining in a way that signals the tone of the work. They also write guides to noodle festivals and multi-restaurant campaigns, such as listings for YYC Noodle Festival and city taco events that emphasise volume and variety.
Roundups of multiple food happenings in a single week or month show a structured, guide-like approach rather than isolated event mentions.
Chains, Menu Launches, and National Food Trends
A significant strand of Hart’s work focuses on national and global chains as they test new menu items, open outlets, or run short-term promotions in Canada.
Articles cover Starbucks dropping a Korean-inspired coffee across Canada, McDonald’s testing a new veggie sandwich at select locations, and Tim Hortons launching savoury pastries and hyped menu items. Fast-food and quick-service chains are treated with the same detail as independent restaurants, with pieces on Chick-fil-A openings, Dairy Queen’s $2 cheeseburgers, Little Caesars’ $5 pizzas, and Popeyes’ new buffalo items. Hart also reports on chain openings that mark first or rare entries into Western Canada, such as Shake Shack’s newest outpost including a full bar and other major brands landing their first Calgary or Edmonton locations.
Trend pieces round out this chain and menu coverage. Hart has written about the food and beverage trends expected to define 2025, including playful concepts like “rebel floats” and “rat cakes,” showing an interest in the broader direction of food culture as well as individual launches.
Lists of “weirdest food stories” of the year and April Fools’ food pranks gather scattered oddities into cohesive narratives, reinforcing a taste for the offbeat corners of the food world. Recognition lists, such as Air Canada’s Best New Restaurants or “sauces worth flying for,” appear alongside chain news, positioning local spots and Canadian brands within national and international frames.
Hands-On Taste Tests and Quirky Local Stories
Hart often adopts an experiential format, trying new items and reporting back in first-person style pieces that still sit within a news framework. One article documents trying the famous Japanese 7-Eleven sandwich in Canada and sharing impressions, turning a product launch into a narrative about taste and expectation. Another dives into tasting new food offerings at the Calgary Stampede Midway, framing festival food as something to be tested and evaluated rather than simply listed.[anchor] These pieces distinguish the coverage from strictly announcement-based reporting by adding direct engagement with the food itself.
There is also a consistent interest in quirky or unusual stories that affect local restaurants.
Hart has written about a Calgary cafe calling on the community for help with a “financial crisis,” a restaurant forced to close after a vandalism incident, and playful mash-ups like chicken tikka waffles or Cali Cabo cuisine. Lists of the “weirdest food stories” and coverage of dirty soda shops, dog bars, and fusion smash burger spots show a preference for concepts that stand out from standard dining formats.
Taken together, these stories underline a beat that not only reports what opens and closes but also pays close attention to character, novelty, and the lived experience of eating in the city.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
Al Culliton is a writer and historian whose work focuses on the American cocktail as a living part of food and culture, using obscure, historic drinks to show how bars, spirits and cities change. They write reported features that trace how forgotten recipes move from old bar guides back onto modern menus, reconstructing how cocktails originally tasted and explaining how new builds reshape them. Their beat is revived classics, regional specialties and low-proof aperitifs, covered one drink at a time with close attention to specs, technique, glassware and service. They write about cocktails as cultural artifacts tied to specific communities and geographies, using single recipes to explore place, identity, regional traditions and diaspora histories. Across masthead work and recipe writing, they combine primary-source research with present-day reporting from working bars, in precise, accessible prose grounded in technical detail.
Alaina Chou
Alaina Chou stands out for rigorously testing food and kitchen products and turning those hands-on trials into clear shopping advice. She is a commerce writer at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, where she makes newsletters and shopping guides for home cooks. Her beat is food commerce, with coverage of air fryers, meal kits, protein powders, pepper grinders, electrolyte drinks, and cookbooks. She focuses on what is worth buying, how it performs, how it tastes, and how it fits daily routines and wellness. She also writes sale-driven lists and roundup pieces, and she has worked on Bon Appétit’s Feel Good Food Plan. Her reporting is practical, direct, and grounded in product testing.
Amadea Tanner
Amadea Tanner is a food journalist for Daily Meal whose distinct focus is food history, culinary nostalgia, and the way everyday dishes reveal broader cultural stories. She covers canned baked beans, boomer-era casseroles, cowboy trail food, and sailors’ rations to show how preservation, technology, labor, and survival shaped familiar staples. Her beat includes retro recipes, mid‑20th‑century home cooking, old-school ice cream flavors, and vintage cookbooks, treating them as records of household budgets and aspirations. She also reports on kitchen culture and domestic design, from breakfast alcoves and pie safes to milk doors and wall phones. Tanner investigates global dish origins and contested national claims in pieces on haggis and pavlova. Beyond Daily Meal, she has worked across food, travel, and sustainability, contributing to outlets including Atlas Obscura, Beau Monde Media, Yahoo, and Tasting Table.
Amanda Garrity
Amanda Garrity stands out for turning food, holidays, and family traditions into practical service stories that help readers plan specific celebrations. She is a lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and has more than seven years of experience as a lifestyle writer and editor, including five years on staff at Good Housekeeping, where she covered home, holidays, food, entertainment, and other lifestyle news. Her work also appears in consumer titles including Prevention, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Best Products. Her beat centers on event-based menus, holiday explainers, and classic TV and film guides, with clear, list-driven reporting that gives readers specific dates, recipes, viewing options, and simple background for family planning.