Ed Levine
Ed Levine treats food as story, using Serious Eats as a platform for narrative-driven explorations of iconic dishes, everyday comfort foods, and the people and places behind them. He is the founder of Serious Eats and has spent years shaping its voice through essays, travelogues, and recipes that connect personal memory with culinary detail. His work on the site ranges from definitive guides and historical deep dives to intimate diaries and tributes, giving his coverage a blend of authority and sentiment that distinguishes it from straight service journalism. He also hosts the food-focused interview podcast Special Sauce, extending his interest in food stories into long-form conversations with figures from across the culinary world. His seasonal dessert coverage includes roundups of cherry-focused baking recipes that urge home cooks to make the most of short fruit seasons.
Peanut Butter and Jelly: A Serious Eats Special Report
Levine returns again and again to familiar, everyday foods, treating them as subjects worthy of extended attention and emotional weight. Pieces like “Peanut Butter and Jelly: A Serious Eats Special Report” and “The Comfort Food Diaries: English Muffins, My Saving Grace” show him using humble staples as a way to talk about memory, identity, and the rhythms of daily life.
He writes recurring “Sunday Brunch” features that walk through dishes such as zucchini frittata with blue cheese, orange French toast, soft scrambled eggs with lump crabmeat, and kosher salami and eggs, mixing straightforward recipe guidance with a sense of occasion and comfort. Articles like “Mocha Brownie Thins: The Smaller Brownie Alternative” and “Ed Levine's Golden Rules of the Perfect Pancake” take a similar approach to home baking and breakfast, framing technique and testing around a clear affection for classic flavors.
Across these pieces, his reporting format is less about exhaustive recipe testing and more about a seasoned eater explaining why particular dishes matter and how to make them live up to their promise.
The Best Pizza Slices in New York City
Levine has a long-standing focus on iconic American foods, particularly pizza, fried chicken, and other foundational dishes.
At Serious Eats he writes ranked and curated guides such as “The Best Pizza Slices in New York City” and “The Best Fried Chicken Recipe Ever?” that read as both recommendations and reflections on what makes these foods great. He expands that lens with “A Slice of Heaven: A History of Pizza in America,” which traces pizza’s evolution and regional styles, connecting personal experience with broader culinary history. Pieces asking “Where Do the Best Peaches Come From?” or weighing the value of Ibérico ham, as in “Ibérico Ham: Crazy Good But Worth the Price?”, show an interest in provenance and quality, pairing consumer questions with informed, opinionated answers.
He also takes on bagels, matzo brei, and other staples, often posing open questions - “How Do You Eat Your Bagel?” - that invite multiple perspectives while still grounding the discussion in his own expertise. This strand of his work positions him as a guide to canonical foods, with an emphasis on taste, tradition, and the small details that separate the ordinary from the memorable.
Los Angeles in 3 Days: The 25 Best Bites in LA for $20 and Under
Levine’s archive includes numerous city-focused eating tours that combine logistics, value, and local character. In “Los Angeles in 3 Days: The 25 Best Bites in LA for $20 and Under” and “The Best Inexpensive Eats in New York City,” he structures coverage around tight budgets and limited time, offering itineraries that help readers maximize both flavor and variety.
Travel pieces like “Fort Worth, Texas: A Serious Eating Tour,” “Gallery: 10 Must-Eat Bites in Havana, Or That Week I Spent in Cuba,” and “Tasting Tour: An Eating Tour of the Barcelona Boqueria” show him moving through markets, neighborhoods, and street vendors with a reporter’s notebook, cataloguing stand-out dishes and scenes. “Eating in Barcelona the Serious Eats Way” and similar stories underscore that these are not just lists of addresses; they are narratives of how to experience a place through its food, with a clear point of view about what counts as essential.
The tone across these guides is conversational and observational rather than purely transactional, making them suited to stories that connect restaurants, travel, and culture rather than simple openings or menu updates.
Serious Eats Through the Years: Our Early Days, in Photos
Levine also writes about the community and history around food, both within Serious Eats and across the broader culinary world. Pieces such as “Serious Eats Through the Years: Our Early Days, in Photos” and “An Open Letter to Serious Eaters” chronicle the evolution of the site, its staff, and its audience, reflecting his role in shaping its identity. His tributes to figures like Kenny Shopsin, Anthony Bourdain, Jonathan Gold, Gina DePalma, Josh Ozersky, and Nora Ephron show another dimension of his beat: he memorializes influential cooks, writers, and restaurateurs, often intertwining biography with scenes from meals and conversations.
These obituaries and appreciations emphasize the human side of the food world and the relationships that form around restaurants and dishes. Beyond the written site, the Special Sauce podcast continues that focus by bringing chefs, restaurateurs, and other cultural figures into extended interviews about their lives and their relationship with food.
Taken together, this work marks Levine as someone whose coverage thrives where food intersects with storytelling, legacy, and the shared experiences of eating.
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.