Connie Ogle
Connie Ogle tracks the life of restaurants and chefs, focusing on how openings, closings and accolades reshape the dining landscape around Miami. Her coverage blends timely news about individual spots with service-driven guides that help readers navigate where to eat and why certain places matter. Across her work, she pays close attention to the stories behind restaurants, from longtime neighborhood fixtures to buzzy newcomers and nationally recognized kitchens.
Restaurant openings and makeovers
Ogle consistently covers new restaurants and major revamps, with a steady stream of pieces on openings across Miami and nearby neighborhoods. Recent work includes an upscale mall restaurant in Kendall reopening after a significant makeover, a new Italian restaurant from a known steakhouse team at Grove Isle, and a popular taco concept from California expanding into Aventura. She also reports on national brands entering the market, such as a century-old Chicago ice cream shop launching in South Florida and a well-known bagel shop from Washington, D.C., coming to Coral Gables.
These stories emphasize specific locations, concepts and ownership, giving clear snapshots of what each new arrival offers and how it fits into the broader scene. Her headlines tend to center on a single venue or development, using direct language to flag what changed and why the opening or makeover is notable.
Closures and the life cycle of local institutions
Closures are a core part of Ogle’s beat, and she documents them with an eye for both history and impact.
She has written about an iconic restaurant in Miami Beach shutting its doors after 17 years, capturing the end of a long run as a local fixture. She similarly covers shorter-lived ventures, including a Spanish tapas restaurant and bar closing on Miami Beach after five years, as well as an intimate Michelin-starred restaurant in Miami Beach closing permanently.
Her archive includes pieces on a Cuban restaurant known for churros closing, a taco spot that started in Miami Beach shutting its Coral Gables location, and an Italian pizza brand closing its Brickell restaurant. Earlier in the pandemic, she assembled a broad account of restaurants lost during COVID-19, turning multiple individual closures into an overview of how the crisis reshaped the city’s dining landscape. She also follows the evolution of long-standing spots, highlighting a Wynwood restaurant that remains a favorite after a decade and a family-owned Chinese restaurant marking 60 years of feeding customers in Fort Lauderdale.
Renovations and temporary pauses appear alongside permanent shutdowns, such as coverage of a famous Overtown restaurant and hot spot closing for renovations, underscoring that change can mean reinvention as well as loss.
Chefs, awards and national recognition
Ogle’s food coverage extends beyond individual dining rooms to the chefs and accolades that bring national attention to Miami’s restaurants. She has profiled top chefs and their menus in a round-up of leading local restaurants, including stories on farm-to-table dinners at Paradise Farms and a seafood restaurant in Kendall recognized among the best in the country. Her reporting on chef Valerie Chang’s James Beard Award-winning Peruvian restaurant traces how personal background and family influence shape a nationally acclaimed kitchen.
She also follows career shifts, such as a chef known for barbecue leaving Miami to open an upscale seafood restaurant in Broward, situating those moves within the pressures and opportunities of the booming restaurant scene. Awards and guides feature prominently: she covers a kitschy Vietnamese restaurant added to the Michelin Guide, explores how Florida restaurants became eligible for Michelin recognition statewide, and writes about a chef celebrated among the best in the country after starting in a food hall.
These pieces link local dining to larger industry trends, showing how individual chefs and restaurants carry Miami onto the national stage.
Guides, programs and dining trends
Alongside news stories, Ogle produces service-oriented guides and trend pieces that help readers understand how they can engage with the food scene. Her work on Miami Spice focuses on using the annual program as an opportunity to try new restaurants, with clear direction on where to go and what kinds of experiences are available. She has examined the rise and staying power of food halls, asking whether they remain popular for diners and framing the discussion around specific venues and local habits.
In a collection of top restaurant stories, she links individual features on chefs and restaurants into a broader guide to standout dining experiences, from luxury outdoor farm dinners to indulgent waterfront spots with notable views of Miami.
Across these formats, she favors concrete details about menus, settings and price points, keeping the emphasis on what diners will encounter rather than abstract trends. Her author bio notes that she enjoys wine, books and the Miami Heat and jokes about disliking mangoes, a sensibility that surfaces in occasional references to local quirks and fruit season in her writing.
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.