Melody Xu
Melody Xu reports on how food businesses and restaurant communities respond to cultural moments and crises, with a focus on Los Angeles cafes and restaurants and the people who run them. Her coverage highlights chefs, owners and neighborhood spots as actors in larger stories about innovation, philanthropy and pop culture. She writes for the Food team at the Los Angeles Times.
Community-minded restaurants and relief efforts
Xu covers restaurants as community hubs, especially when they mobilize in response to disasters. In her piece on L.A. Venezuelan restaurants unite to provide earthquake relief, she reports how prominent Venezuelan restaurants collaborate to raise funds and connect people after a major earthquake, detailing the mechanics of fundraising and the motivations of owners and organizers. Her reporting traces the path from dining room to relief effort, showing how immigrant and diaspora food businesses use their platforms for mutual aid and cross-border support. She leans on interviews with owners and organizers to explain how menus, events and outreach are adapted to channel money and attention toward impacted communities.
Chef profiles and culinary legacies
Xu writes closely observed profiles of chefs whose work shaped what and how people eat in Los Angeles. In her obituary for master sushi chef Katsuya Uechi, she documents his role as a pioneering chef and the creator of spicy tuna crispy rice, situating that dish in the wider evolution of sushi in the city. The piece blends career chronology with the story of a single iconic menu item, explaining how Uechi developed it and how it spread through contemporary sushi culture. She uses interviews and historical detail to show the influence of one chef on both fine dining and everyday restaurant offerings, emphasizing technique, personality and business decisions rather than celebrity.
Cafes, coffee culture and pop TV crossovers
Xu regularly covers cafes and coffee shops, particularly where beverage trends overlap with media exposure and neighborhood identity. In her feature on 'Love Island' fame turns a Mar Vista surf cafe into a neighborhood hot spot, she reports how Saba, a surf-themed cafe, becomes a busy local destination after appearing on “Love Island USA,” tracing the impact of reality TV visibility on foot traffic, branding and customer mix. She focuses on the owners’ experience of sudden attention, how the shop balances its original community feel with new demand, and how a single TV placement can change a small business’s trajectory.
She also writes service pieces such as 10 unique cream top lattes and cold brews that you'll only find in L.A., a guide to distinctive cream-topped coffee and matcha drinks across the city. That list spotlights individual drinks and the shops that serve them, with emphasis on presentation, texture and flavor, and it situates cream-top beverages as part of the city’s broader embellished drink culture. Across these stories, Xu uses detailed descriptions of drinks and spaces along with owner and customer voices to show how cafes function as both lifestyle settings and small businesses reacting to trends.
Emerging food reporter with a student newsroom background
Xu is an intern with the Los Angeles Times Food team and a rising senior studying journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. She has experience as managing editor of her campus newspaper, where she has worked on editing and newsroom leadership alongside reporting. Before joining the Food team, she gained early reporting experience at local and regional newspapers, including internships and work at a hometown daily and a metropolitan outlet, giving her exposure to community news and larger-city coverage. This background informs her current work, which combines attention to neighborhood-level detail with clear, structured reporting on food businesses and the people behind them.
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.