Cymbeline Young
Cymbeline Young is a news reporter at the Bournemouth Daily Echo, covering regional news with a strong emphasis on local food and hospitality stories. Her work treats new restaurants, food chains, and dining events as local stories about people and place rather than simple listings. She combines clear, practical detail with a consistent focus on how venues and events fit into everyday life in Bournemouth and the surrounding area.
New restaurants and food venues
Young regularly covers new restaurant openings and food businesses in Bournemouth and Poole, with pieces that introduce both the concept and the practicalities of a venue.
One recent story profiles a Japanese restaurant built around the idea of “memory, warmth, and sharing”, connecting its culinary theme to how it wants guests to experience the space. In her coverage of MK Gourmet Kitchen at The Dolphin in Poole, she sets out the restaurant’s family-run character, its menu of homemade breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes, and its opening hours across the week. Her report on the launch of a Wingstop branch in Bournemouth follows hundreds of people queuing in the square, describes where the new restaurant sits within the Bobby’s building, and explains the chain’s dine-in, takeaway and delivery offer along with late-night operating hours.
Across these stories she brings together concept, location and service details, giving readers enough information to understand what is new and how to use it.
Food, drink and community occasions
Young’s food coverage extends beyond openings to community events where food and drink are central to the experience. In a feature on World Cocktail Day at a Ferndown care home, she reports on residents taking part in cocktail and mocktail making and a taste-testing party, presenting the occasion as a social event built around drinks rather than a lifestyle piece aimed at consumers. The emphasis on residents and their enjoyment shows how she uses food and drink to frame stories about communal life and participation.
This approach makes her food writing relevant to organisations whose events are designed to bring people together as much as to promote a menu.
Regional news and human-focused features
Alongside food and hospitality, Young covers wider regional news and human-impact stories, which informs the tone of her food coverage.
In one report, she highlights data showing that 21 per cent of secondary school aged girls in Dorset have struggled to afford or access period products, framing the issue through local statistics and the lived reality of pupils. Another piece follows the arrival of a six-deck superyacht with a helipad and infinity pool in Poole, treating it as an extraordinary local sight and describing its features in accessible terms.
These assignments show her comfort with both harder social topics and lighter curiosity pieces, and the same straightforward style carries into her writing on restaurants and food events. She tends to explain why a story matters to local readers, whether that is a new place to eat, a striking vessel in the harbour, or the affordability of essential products.
Background and reporting approach
Young is an NCTJ-qualified multimedia news and sport journalist, now working as a news reporter at the Bournemouth Daily Echo.
Her professional description stresses that she covers regional news across the south, focusing on stories that matter to local communities and on the people and moments that shape the area. Before joining the Echo she worked as a multimedia journalist for other regional news outlets, which underpins her ability to report across formats and subjects. In practice, this background shows in her food and hospitality work: she writes about restaurants and chains with the same news discipline she brings to social issues, making sure locations, opening times, and core facts are precise while keeping the language plain and accessible. For organisations in the food, drink and hospitality space, she is a reporter who treats openings and events as part of the local news agenda, situating them within community life rather than as standalone lifestyle coverage.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
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Alaina Chou
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Amadea Tanner
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Amanda Garrity
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