Madi Lee
Madi Lee connects restaurants to the experiences that surround them, using dining guides and feature reporting to show how food fits into theatre seasons, live music, travel, and everyday life. As a freelance food writer contributing to St. Louis Magazine, she covers the city’s dining scene through themed guides, profiles of new concepts, and stories that foreground hospitality and atmosphere as much as the plate. Her work also extends to other outlets, where she examines sourcing and kitchen craft, adding depth on how local chefs push the boundaries of what a food city can be.
Dinner and a show
Lee’s most distinctive thread is her “dinner and a show” coverage, pairing specific productions with restaurant recommendations that mirror each show’s tone and setting. In her guide to where to eat before every Broadway show at the Fox, she matches titles such as Clue, The Great Gatsby, Mamma Mia!, and Wicked with themed restaurant pairings that “set the stage” for the entire 2026–27 season.
The format is explicitly occasion-focused: each recommendation is selected to echo the narrative or era of the production, turning a night at the theatre into a curated food experience rather than a simple pre-show meal.
She applies the same approach to outdoor musical theatre, building a show-by-show dining guide for The Muny’s 2026 program.
That piece matches productions such as Hairspray and Ain’t Too Proud with restaurants whose menus and ambience reflect the themes on stage, from Maryland crab cakes to Detroit-style pizza. On the Arch Eats podcast, Lee talks through these pairings and frames The Muny as a “jumping off point” for exploring popular local restaurants, balancing dine-in options with casual takeout designed to be eaten under the stars.
Across these guides and appearances, she treats theatre seasons as storylines and uses restaurants to extend those stories into the city’s streets.
New restaurants and tasting menus
Lee’s feature reporting goes deep on new dining concepts, with an emphasis on tasting menus and the details of service and space. Her coverage of Malo, a modern Mexican restaurant in The Grove, traces how the team from Good Hospitality has transformed a former café into a fine-dining concept anchored by a 10-course tasting menu. She describes the restaurant’s inventive cuisine and modern atmosphere alongside its walk-in cocktail bar, highlighting how thoughtful hospitality and design support the ambition of the menu.
Dish descriptions in the piece, from a tortilla with huitlacoche butter as an “introductory bite” to lamb barbacoa that honors traditional flavors through unconventional preparation, show her focus on both flavor logic and storytelling.
Elsewhere in the dining section, Lee reports on more casual formats that still hinge on concept and experience. One recent story follows a vintage Cushman vehicle that brings skewers, sliders, and street-food charm to a series of local pop-ups, framing the mobile kitchen as part of the city’s evolving food landscape rather than a novelty. Across these pieces, she treats openings not just as news but as opportunities to explain how a restaurant fits into its neighborhood and what kind of occasion it is built to serve.
Local food culture and seafood
Lee also works in guide mode for everyday food decisions, focusing on how and where people shop and eat locally. Her guide to shopping local for food maps out independent options for sourcing ingredients, positioning markets and specialty shops as part of the broader dining ecosystem rather than separate from restaurant culture. The emphasis is on practical utility - where to go and why - paired with an understanding of how these businesses contribute to the region’s food identity.
Her work at Sauce Magazine adds another dimension through a feature on restaurants making waves with seafood. In that story, she follows chefs who use thoughtful sourcing and imaginative preparation to push expectations of seafood in a landlocked city. The piece highlights how menu choices and technique can reframe what diners think is possible in a local context, reinforcing her interest in the relationship between geography, supply chains, and what shows up on the plate. Taken together, these guides and features show a reporter who treats local food culture as a system - restaurants, markets, and producers all connected by decisions about sourcing and style.
Food, travel, and storytelling beyond the magazine
Lee’s author biography underscores that she approaches food writing as storytelling across mediums, not just as restaurant criticism. In 2025 she launched a personal newsletter where she shares feature stories on the St. Louis dining scene alongside travel recaps, destination guides, personal essays, and lifestyle photography.
That independent work sits alongside her return to journalistic roots in 2026 as a freelance food writer, a role in which she continues to tell stories through food, travel, and the connections people make around the table.
Within the magazine, she appears as part of the dining team in columns that invite contributors to weigh in on standout dishes, which reinforces her position inside the local food conversation rather than outside of it. Her podcast work, newsletter writing, and print features all share the same core interest: using specific meals, restaurants, and trips to explore how people experience place and community. Across beats - dinner-and-a-show guides, opening coverage, seafood features, and shopping-local roundups - Lee’s coverage is distinguished by its sense of occasion and narrative, making her a fit for stories that link food to culture, experience, and setting rather than treating it as an isolated subject.
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.