Martha Cruz
Martha Cruz covers how Las Vegas food, entertainment and community experiences intersect, with a focus on new openings and curated events. As a digital content producer and assignment desk editor at FOX5 Vegas, she turns venue announcements, programming calendars and local initiatives into concise, service‑oriented stories for viewers.
Food and venue openings
Cruz regularly reports on new restaurant and bar concepts, especially when they are tied to high‑profile entertainment districts or hospitality brands. Her coverage of Nacho Daddy opening a new location at AREA15 highlights menu‑driven attractions alongside the novelty of the space, framing the story around what guests can expect and when doors will open. In pieces like these, she emphasizes practical details — opening timelines, location specifics and distinctive offerings — rather than critique, positioning her work as a guide for people deciding where to eat and drink next.
Entertainment calendars and lifestyle experiences
Beyond food openings, Cruz writes about lifestyle experiences that often include a hospitality component. Her report on Dive In Movies returning for the summer at The Cosmopolitan focuses on how locals can turn a standard movie night into a resort outing, noting the setting, schedule and the appeal of combining film with poolside leisure. She uses straightforward language and a promotional but fact‑based tone, giving readers enough information to plan an outing without layering in opinion or long narrative.
Community events and public initiatives
Cruz also covers large‑scale community campaigns that bring residents into shared spaces, including stadiums and event venues. In her story on the Raiders and Intermountain Health rallying thousands of people for a CPR Guinness World Records attempt in Las Vegas, she details the organizing partners, participation goals and the public‑health rationale for the event. The framing connects a major sports brand, a healthcare provider and local attendees, showing how civic initiatives are staged as mass experiences rather than closed trainings.
Breaking news support and collaborative coverage
Alongside features on food and lifestyle, Cruz contributes to breaking and developing news as part of FOX5’s digital team. In joint bylines on incidents such as a grocery store shooting in Las Vegas, she helps package updates that track law‑enforcement response and community impact. She has also shared credit on coverage of public meetings and political events, including local forums and party gatherings featuring national figures, where her role is to distill key outcomes and on‑the‑record remarks into accessible summaries. These pieces mirror the concise, fact‑forward style of her features, indicating a consistent approach across lighter lifestyle stories and more serious news.
Role at FOX5 Vegas
Cruz holds a hybrid position that combines digital production with assignment desk responsibilities, which situates her at the intersection of planning and publishing across the newsroom. She joined FOX5 Vegas in March 2026, and her work since then shows a balance between planned coverage — openings, seasonal programming, organized community events — and responsive reporting tied to the daily news cycle. This mix gives her coverage a practical, bulletin‑like quality: whether she is writing about a new restaurant at a destination venue or a large‑scale CPR event, the core is timely information, clear context and direct utility for people deciding how to spend their time in and around major Las Vegas locations.
4 more food journalists.
Al Culliton
Al Culliton is a writer and historian whose work focuses on the American cocktail as a living part of food and culture, using obscure, historic drinks to show how bars, spirits and cities change. They write reported features that trace how forgotten recipes move from old bar guides back onto modern menus, reconstructing how cocktails originally tasted and explaining how new builds reshape them. Their beat is revived classics, regional specialties and low-proof aperitifs, covered one drink at a time with close attention to specs, technique, glassware and service. They write about cocktails as cultural artifacts tied to specific communities and geographies, using single recipes to explore place, identity, regional traditions and diaspora histories. Across masthead work and recipe writing, they combine primary-source research with present-day reporting from working bars, in precise, accessible prose grounded in technical detail.
Alaina Chou
Alaina Chou stands out for rigorously testing food and kitchen products and turning those hands-on trials into clear shopping advice. She is a commerce writer at Bon Appétit and Epicurious, where she makes newsletters and shopping guides for home cooks. Her beat is food commerce, with coverage of air fryers, meal kits, protein powders, pepper grinders, electrolyte drinks, and cookbooks. She focuses on what is worth buying, how it performs, how it tastes, and how it fits daily routines and wellness. She also writes sale-driven lists and roundup pieces, and she has worked on Bon Appétit’s Feel Good Food Plan. Her reporting is practical, direct, and grounded in product testing.
Amadea Tanner
Amadea Tanner is a food journalist for Daily Meal whose distinct focus is food history, culinary nostalgia, and the way everyday dishes reveal broader cultural stories. She covers canned baked beans, boomer-era casseroles, cowboy trail food, and sailors’ rations to show how preservation, technology, labor, and survival shaped familiar staples. Her beat includes retro recipes, mid‑20th‑century home cooking, old-school ice cream flavors, and vintage cookbooks, treating them as records of household budgets and aspirations. She also reports on kitchen culture and domestic design, from breakfast alcoves and pie safes to milk doors and wall phones. Tanner investigates global dish origins and contested national claims in pieces on haggis and pavlova. Beyond Daily Meal, she has worked across food, travel, and sustainability, contributing to outlets including Atlas Obscura, Beau Monde Media, Yahoo, and Tasting Table.
Amanda Garrity
Amanda Garrity stands out for turning food, holidays, and family traditions into practical service stories that help readers plan specific celebrations. She is a lifestyle editor at TODAY.com and has more than seven years of experience as a lifestyle writer and editor, including five years on staff at Good Housekeeping, where she covered home, holidays, food, entertainment, and other lifestyle news. Her work also appears in consumer titles including Prevention, Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, and Best Products. Her beat centers on event-based menus, holiday explainers, and classic TV and film guides, with clear, list-driven reporting that gives readers specific dates, recipes, viewing options, and simple background for family planning.