Erin McDowell
Erin McDowell focuses on how everyday diners experience food, testing fast-food menus, chain-restaurant promotions, and approachable home recipes to see what truly delivers on taste, value, and trend hype.
She is a senior reporter on Business Insider's editorial partnerships team, covering food, lifestyle, and entertainment for the masthead and partner platforms including MSN, Apple News, and Yahoo. Her work is widely syndicated and blends first-hand tasting with clear reporting on pricing, portion sizes, and menu strategy. She has also written for outlets such as V Magazine, Milk.XYZ, OUT.com, and Brides Magazine, extending her food and lifestyle coverage beyond Business Insider’s core audience.
Fast-food taste tests and rankings
McDowell’s most distinctive work sits in comprehensive taste tests and rankings of fast-food items, where she orders broadly and then sorts winners and losers on flavor, texture, and value. She has tried chicken tenders from 14 fast-food chains, including McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, KFC, Wingstop, and Taco Bell, and ranked them from least to most favorite based on flavor, texture, and overall value. In a long-running project, she has ranked 13 fast-food double cheeseburgers from major brands such as McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Shake Shack, White Castle, Whataburger, Five Guys, Cook Out, Checkers, Sonic, P.
Terry's, 7th Street Burger, and In-N-Out to identify which offers the best combination of taste and price.
She extends this ranking format to specific brands, repeatedly returning to Burger King to test menu updates and limited-time offerings. McDowell has reviewed Burger King’s revamped chicken nuggets, detailing how crispier texture and a more flavorful marinade respond to customer complaints about the old recipe. She has also assessed Burger King’s upgraded Whopper, tying changes like new box packaging, a different bun, and creamier mayonnaise to reported boosts in sales and higher same-store performance.
In another story, she tried and ranked all the items in Burger King’s “Star Wars” Mandalorian-themed menu, from a reimagined Whopper to new sides, dipping sauce, and a cookie-flavored milkshake, judging which deserve a permanent place on the menu.
Her comparisons are not limited to one brand or country. In a joint piece, she tried similar McDonald's meals in New York City and London - including spicy chicken sandwiches, fries, an apple pie, and a fruity drink - to compare taste and value between the US and UK, with attention to flavor profiles and portion sizes.
She applies the same structured approach when ranking sauces, sides, or full meals, building lists that show how mass-market products stack up against one another on criteria a casual diner would recognize.
Chain restaurants, deals, and comebacks
McDowell consistently covers casual-dining chains and their efforts to reinvent themselves through promotions, menu revamps, and loyalty-driving deals. She has written about Chili’s, drawing on years of personal visits to show how items like the Triple Dipper appetizer platter and new chicken sandwiches signal a broader comeback for the chain. Her coverage of Red Lobster tracks the company’s shift away from Endless Shrimp toward value-driven promotions such as “Shrimp Your Way” and the seasonal Lobster Fest, linking menu changes to a turnaround strategy under new leadership.
She looks closely at bottomless and limited-time offers, using a single meal to unpack how these promotions work for both diners and chains. At Olive Garden, McDowell attempted the Never-Ending Pasta Bowl, documenting available pasta shapes, sauce options, and protein add-ons, along with the total bill and what that bought in soup or salad, breadsticks, and leftovers.
She brings the same lens to The Cheesecake Factory, trying all the new fall menu items and ranking them, noting standouts like mini slider burgers and a chicken-and-waffles spin while situating them within the chain’s broader menu strategy.
Her reporting also steps back from individual brands to look at the chain-restaurant landscape. On Business Insider’s author page, her recent work includes a rundown of chain restaurants closing hundreds of US locations in 2026, as well as lists of the 25 best new restaurants in the country and the most iconic burger joint in every state, blending data-driven selections with on-the-ground impressions of atmosphere and menu. Across these pieces, McDowell uses specific visits, prices, and promotional details to show how chains compete for attention and loyalty in a crowded market.
Home cooking and celebrity-chef recipes
Alongside restaurant coverage, McDowell regularly tests home recipes that mirror how readers cook for weeknight dinners, game days, and comfort-food occasions.
She has compared baked mac-and-cheese recipes from Ina Garten, Ree Drummond, and Martha Stewart, identifying which stood out after direct cooking and tasting. In other stories, she has tried and ranked Buffalo chicken dip recipes from celebrity figures like The Pioneer Woman and Joanna Gaines, again grounding conclusions in preparation steps, ingredient lists, and crowd appeal.
Her home-cooking coverage often centers on accessible formats like slow cookers and Crock-Pots. She has written about 12 game-day foods that can be made in a slow cooker and shared her own six-ingredient slow-cooker Buffalo chicken dip that she returns to every game day, emphasizing ease, repeatability, and cost-conscious ingredients. She applies a similar method to easy weeknight pasta recipes by well-known television cooks, deciding which are worth adding to a regular dinner rotation after cooking and tasting them.
The same structured ranking approach appears when she tries and orders barbecue sauces by preference, judging them on tang, sweetness, and versatility for home use.
Food trends, events, and dining culture
Beyond individual dishes, McDowell reports on broader food trends and how they show up in restaurants and home kitchens. In a piece on nine food trends that will be everywhere in 2026, she synthesizes trend reports from sources including Tastewise, Pinterest, and Yelp to spotlight themes like sweet-and-spicy sauces, bite-sized menu items, cabbage, and fast-casual Indian cuisine, connecting them to real menus and consumer behavior. Her lists of standout new restaurants and iconic burger spots in every state further illustrate how trends translate into specific dining rooms and regional favorites.
She also uses events and notable venues to explore dining culture. McDowell has ranked the best and worst foods she ate at the US Open, treating the tournament as a snapshot of contemporary concessions - from standout dishes to options she would skip next time. At Café La Trova in Miami, a Cuban hot spot visited by figures like Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, she details chef-driven menus with traditional Cuban recipes and modern touches, such as Cuban sandwich empanadas.
Across these stories, McDowell shows how food trends intersect with celebrity, travel, and entertainment, while keeping the focus on what diners actually taste and how much they pay.
Taken together, McDowell’s work presents a clear through-line: she tests the accessible food that people encounter most often - fast-food items, chain-restaurant deals, and comfort-driven home recipes - and reports plainly on which options are worth attention, which feel like pure marketing, and where broader trends in dining are heading.
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.