Dianne de Guzman
Dianne de Guzman focuses on how people eat and drink across Northern California, tying together high-level restaurant news with close, practical detail on where to go and what to order. Her coverage blends openings, guides, and firsthand dining reports, with an emphasis on the Bay Area’s most-watched restaurants and bars.
Regional editor shaping Northern California coverage
De Guzman is an award-winning journalist and the regional editor for Eater’s Northern California and Pacific Northwest sites. In that role she steers coverage of restaurant and bar trends and upcoming openings for Eater SF, providing both news and service reporting for the Bay Area dining scene. Her byline on major franchise pieces, such as the long-running guide to the 38 best restaurants in San Francisco, shows her as a key voice in defining which places matter most in the region’s restaurant landscape.
Beyond list-making, she writes newsroom-facing pieces that explain how Eater SF gathers information from the community, such as the tipline announcement encouraging readers and industry insiders to send in news about openings, closings, and other developments. The combination of editorial leadership and direct reporting means her work often sets the agenda for how Eater covers Northern California food and drink, rather than simply following it.
Maps, guides, and structured service coverage
A significant portion of De Guzman’s work appears in map and guide formats that organize the Bay Area’s restaurant scene for diners.
In the “38 Best Restaurants in San Francisco” guide, she curates an updated roster of standout restaurants across cuisines and price points, offering capsule descriptions that highlight what each restaurant does best and why it belongs on a short list. Her guides often balance well-known destinations with newer or more niche spots, signaling both staying power and emerging trends.
She also produces focused roundups and explainer-style pieces that track specific categories, such as restaurant and bar trends or notable openings and closures, using headlines and structured sections to make it easy for readers to scan for what’s new. These service-oriented formats distinguish her coverage from more generic beat reporting by giving readers clear, navigable frameworks - maps, lists, and recurring features - rather than isolated news hits.
Dining out columns and dish-level detail
De Guzman’s dining-out columns show a more personal, observational side of her reporting. In a recent piece on the best dishes she ate in May, she walks through standout items at multiple Bay Area restaurants and bars, describing specifics such as olive-studded bread from a bakery and a tostada layered with eggplant, whipped ricotta, and salsa de tijera at a cafe in Berkeley. She notes textures, flavor balance, and the context of the meal, giving readers a sense of how a dish actually feels to eat, not just that it exists on a menu.
These columns often include practical information, such as operating hours and addresses for each venue, embedded alongside her impressions. That mix of sensory detail with logistical data makes the pieces function both as narrative dispatches and as ready-to-use mini-guides for readers planning their own visits.
Industry news and cultural context
Alongside service coverage, De Guzman writes news and analysis pieces that situate Bay Area restaurants within larger industry conversations.
In a story marking the shutdown of the influential food magazine Lucky Peach, she looks at the publication’s role in the food world and notes how many Bay Area writers had bylines there, connecting a national media closure to the local community of food journalists and chefs. Her news writing tends to focus on what changes mean for diners and workers, not just the fact that an announcement was made.
She also handles institutional updates for Eater SF, such as the tipline piece framed around inviting readers to contribute to coverage while emphasizing that “flattery is nice but tips will suffice,” conveying the outlet’s tone and priorities in a concise way. Taken together, these industry-facing stories show that her beat includes both the restaurants themselves and the ecosystem of media, chefs, and readers that surround them.
Role beyond Eater SF
Outside her day-to-day Eater SF coverage, De Guzman is identified as a regional editor working across Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, with experience in editing and cutting news packages on multiple platforms. She has been featured externally as Eater SF’s regional editor in segments that put her on camera or on social platforms alongside chefs, underscoring her role as a representative voice for the outlet in conversations about Bay Area dining.
Her broader background in journalism supports the mix of breaking news, service writing, and narrative food coverage that characterizes her current work.
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.