Marie Elena Martinez
Marie Elena Martinez covers the food and restaurants of Long Island with a focus on how dessert concepts, everyday eateries and specialty markets shape the local dining landscape. She combines on-the-ground reporting for Newsday with a long background as a national food and travel writer, bringing broader culinary context to neighborhood stories. Her work often tracks openings, returns and trends, giving readers a clear picture of what is new, notable and worth seeking out across the region’s dining scene.
Waterfront sweets and dessert trends
Martinez’s coverage of desserts frequently centers on stories where novelty meets local tradition, such as the return of Mann’s ice cream boat and the rise of on-demand treats on the water framed as a “dessert Uber” trend.
She extends that attention to land-based dessert players, reporting on openings like Van Leeuwen’s Long Island ice cream shop and placing national brands within the context of the local ice cream culture. Her dessert pieces tend to link individual businesses to larger patterns, showing how new boats, scoop shops and specialty vendors contribute to a changing landscape for sweets on Long Island.
The through-line is a clear, service-driven look at where and how people can experience these trends themselves, rather than abstract commentary on the industry.
Neighborhood restaurant openings and market expansions
Martinez plays a central role in Newsday’s coverage of restaurant openings, contributing reporting and photography to weekly roundups of newly opened Long Island spots. Her work on Italian food markets, including the expansion of Salpino’s Italian Food Markets to a third location, illustrates how she treats grocery and prepared-food businesses as part of the dining beat, tracking how expansions change options for shoppers and home cooks as well as diners. These stories emphasize practical detail - where the new outpost is, what it offers, how it compares to established competitors - while maintaining a straightforward tone that helps readers quickly understand what has changed.
Across openings and market coverage, she highlights the mix of independent operators and growing brands that define everyday eating on Long Island.
Guides to signature sandwiches and special-occasion dining
Martinez’s reporting often takes the form of guided explorations of specific dishes or formats, such as joining a Newsday video quest for the best bacon, egg and cheese sandwich on Long Island. In that work she acts as both reporter and on-camera food writer, helping audiences navigate a crowded field of delis and cafes to find standout versions of an iconic local breakfast sandwich. Her coverage of chef’s tables and multi-course dining goes in the opposite direction, mapping out restaurants that offer more formal, curated experiences for special occasions.
By pairing accessible sandwich hunts with pieces on tasting menus and chef’s tables, she shows range across price points and formats while maintaining a consistent, user-oriented focus on where readers can go for specific types of meals.
Food, travel and culinary events beyond Newsday
Before and alongside her work at Newsday, Martinez has built a substantial freelance career focused on food and travel, with features appearing in major outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Miami Herald and the Boston Globe.
That background gives her a wide-angle view of restaurants and destinations, which informs the way she situates Long Island stories within broader dining and travel trends. She also founded New Worlder, a culinary-focused media platform, and the events brand Meets NYC, creating spaces that bring together chefs, writers and diners around food experiences.
This mix of national writing and event work reflects an interest in both storytelling and community-building, and it underpins her current reporting with a deep familiarity with chefs, operators and the business side of hospitality. Her photography credits across Newsday’s food coverage further indicate a visual approach to the beat, documenting dishes, dining rooms and markets as carefully as she reports on them.
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.