Erika Adams
Erika Adams covers how restaurants and dining culture are changing, with a focus on the people, tools, and trends that shape how and where people eat. She writes as an editor at Food & Wine, concentrating on restaurant news and broader food culture shifts, after years of reporting on dining scenes for other food publications.
Restaurant and dining culture coverage
At Food & Wine, Adams’ work centers on restaurants and the experience of eating out, treating dining rooms, chefs, and service styles as a way to understand what is happening in food culture. Her coverage includes reported stories on how restaurants adapt to emerging habits such as solo dining, highlighting operational changes and guest experience details rather than just trend labels. Across her work, she tracks shifts in restaurant formats, menus, and hospitality, drawing on her background as an editor focused on major city dining scenes to situate new concepts within longer-running industry patterns.
Tools, chefs, and the craft of cooking
Adams also writes about the tools and techniques that working cooks rely on, often through the lens of well-known chefs. In her Food & Wine coverage of kitchen gear endorsed by figures like Nancy Silverton, Ina Garten, and Martha Stewart, she uses a single tool to open up a broader conversation about professional standards, home cooking habits, and what makes equipment genuinely useful over time. Where chefs are the subject, she prioritises how they cook and work - what they pack when they travel, how they build menus, and which practices they carry from restaurant kitchens into everyday cooking - rather than personality profiles or lifestyle angles.
News and trends editing
Within the masthead, Adams holds a senior news and trends role, shaping coverage of dining and food culture developments beyond her own bylines. Her editing work sits at the intersection of restaurant industry reporting and consumer-facing food media, bringing together timely news, service pieces, and cultural analysis under a coherent point of view on what matters in food right now. This role builds on her previous experience as an editor and reporter covering restaurant news and dining trends across multiple Northeast cities, which informs how she reads local stories against national movements in hospitality and eating habits.
Background in regional restaurant reporting
Before joining Food & Wine, Adams spent several years as an editor and reporter focused on restaurants in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York, covering openings, closings, and evolving dining trends across those markets. That work honed a beat that combines granular restaurant news with an eye for how neighbourhood-level shifts in dining reflect larger economic and cultural changes. She continues to draw on that regional reporting experience in her current coverage, treating individual restaurants and chefs as entry points into wider stories about how people eat and gather.
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.