Eric Sandler
Eric Sandler covers Houston’s dining and entertainment scene with a focus on restaurants, bars, and chefs, combining news, service guides, and interviews across articles and audio. As city editor at CultureMap Houston, he oversees coverage of the city’s cultural landscape while continuing to write regularly and host the weekly “What’s Eric Eating” podcast. His coverage is most distinctive when a story touches restaurant openings or closings, chef moves, major awards, and how those shifts shape where people go out in Houston.
Houston restaurant openings, closings, and neighborhood dining
Sandler’s core reporting tracks the lifecycle of Houston restaurants, from first announcement to long-running institutions shutting their doors. Recent headlines highlight a Southwestern-inspired restaurant closing after 28 years, a long-standing steakhouse location shuttering after 25 years, and a new chicken concept built around “gluten-friendly” tenders.
He follows redevelopment closely, writing about projects that add ice cream shops, juice bars, and other food tenants to evolving neighborhoods.
Service-oriented pieces such as running lists of restaurants serving Easter brunch and guides to Houston’s best neighborhood restaurants show him translating news into practical choices for people planning a meal out. The confirmed story on Houston restaurants winning multiple James Beard Awards fits this pattern, tying national recognition back to where locals can actually dine.
Chefs, competitions, and culinary recognition
Chef movement and recognition are recurring through-lines in Sandler’s work. He writes about top Houston chefs being recruited for premium inflight dining programs and Beard-recognized chefs expanding with second taquerias in emerging areas. Coverage of street corn at a truffle-driven chef competition and profiles of confectioners and chocolatiers show an interest in the craft behind dishes, not just the openings themselves. Through “What’s Eric Eating,” he sits down with chefs such as Brandon Silva of Degust and specialty makers like Dany Kamkhagi of Mostly Chocolate to explore how their restaurants and products fit into the city’s culinary landscape. The James Beard wins story extends that perspective to national awards, positioning Houston’s chefs within a broader conversation about excellence and influence.
Bars, bartenders, and the nightlife side of dining
Sandler consistently treats bars and bartenders as a central part of Houston’s entertainment beat.
He has compiled lists of Houston’s best bartenders and cataloged the city’s best bars, often tying them to CultureMap’s Tastemaker Awards and other local honors. Headlines about speakeasies that pair chocolates and cocktails, and features on bar-focused Tastemaker nominees, show him linking drink programs with stories about community and hospitality. When he covers closures, including longstanding bar outposts, the focus stays on what those changes mean for regulars and for the city’s nightlife options.
This bar coverage runs alongside his restaurant reporting, giving a more complete picture of where people go out to eat and drink.
Cross-platform food coverage and city-life projects
Beyond straight articles, Sandler extends CultureMap’s dining coverage through his long-running “What’s Eric Eating” podcast. The show delivers weekly restaurant news, reviews, and interviews, reinforcing his role as a bridge between the industry and the audience.
Podcast descriptions reference recent stories about neighborhood restaurant openings, long-running spots closing, and chef-driven competitions, underscoring how his audio and written work feed into each other. Within CultureMap’s broader city-life coverage, he also helps launch projects such as the “Ask the CM Three” advice column, which brings together perspectives from different contributors on reader questions.
Taken together, his work positions dining as a central lens for understanding local entertainment and everyday city life, rather than a separate lifestyle vertical.
4 more entertainment journalists.
Aaron Couch
Aaron Couch connects fan-driven genre stories with the business of filmmaking at The Hollywood Reporter, where he is film editor and co-writer of the Heat Vision newsletter. He covers big-budget franchises, comic book properties, horror and genre cinema, studio deals, film development and the producers who shape them. His beat includes trailers, superhero films, franchise strategy, comic-to-film adaptations, production deals and the people behind repeatable genre hits. He has written about Tom Holland’s Spider-Man return, Sony acquiring Michelle Yeoh’s The Surgeon, adaptation interest in a Boston Globe article about lesbian bars, and horror producers Roy Lee and Steven Schneider. He reports on both fandom and industry mechanics, connecting trailers, creators and comics with careers, dealmaking, publicity cycles and franchise stewardship.
Adam Blevins
Adam Blevins tracks how major entertainment projects perform, stall, and evolve across theaters and streaming platforms. He is a senior author at Collider covering film, television, superhero and science-fiction franchises, and gaming-related screen projects. His core beat is box office results, streaming performance, release windows, budgets, production changes, cancellations, sequels, and franchise durability. He has written exclusives involving Avengers: Doomsday, The Penguin, and Star Wars: Skeleton Crew. Earlier, he wrote gaming features at Screen Rant and became a senior editor at Agents of Fandom, where he interviewed talent connected to Marvel Studios, House of the Dragon, and Planet of the Apes. He also visited the set of The Chosen. His reporting is high-volume, direct, and data-driven, using metrics, release details, interviews, and production context to explain commercial prospects and fan interest.
Adele Ankers-Range
Adele Ankers-Range is a senior writer at MovieWeb who tracks streaming thrillers, book-to-screen adaptations, and industry announcements through the fan conversations around them. Writing professionally since 2015, she has also contributed to IGN, Sideshow Collectibles, Screen Rant, and other genre-focused brands. Her beat covers new and upcoming film and television titles, especially thrillers, high-concept genre releases, literary franchises, and projects moving from development to release. She reports on teaser reveals, casting, release dates, CinemaCon announcements, platform strategy, and early critical response. Her coverage often uses reception metrics such as Rotten Tomatoes scores to show how a release is landing. She returns to adaptations as they develop, following announcements, talent attachments, marketing, and final release details. Her work is fast, news-driven, concise, and attentive to fan theories, speculation, and the reasons a project matters.
Adrianna Freedman
Adrianna Freedman turns fan-driven TV and streaming moments into fast, service-focused entertainment stories for Good Housekeeping. She covers network dramas, procedurals, Hallmark titles, streaming releases and book-to-screen projects, including renewals, premiere dates, cast news, release timing, platforms and pricing. Her work centers on how developments affect committed viewers. She also reports on daytime hosts and celebrities, covering health updates, family milestones, career changes, social posts and fan response without gossip or speculation. Freedman conducts interviews and writes features on subjects such as personal books, career milestones and awards. She has written for or across Hearst titles including ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health and Town & Country, as well as Prevention and Oprah Daily. Her coverage of television, movies, music and celebrity pop culture uses clear language, concise explainers and direct, headline-driven angles.