Nicole Estaphan
Nicole Estaphan is a reporter and producer for WCVB Channel 5’s Chronicle whose food coverage focuses on the stories behind what people eat, highlighting the families, traditions and histories that shape local restaurants, cafés and specialty shops. She is a five-time Emmy Award winning journalist who uses the program’s long-form format to turn everyday meals and food rituals into character-driven narratives. Her work includes a feature on a Massachusetts ice cream shop run by a family of seven siblings, told as a story about responsibility, entrepreneurship and childhood around a small dessert business. She returns often to the idea that food connects people to place and memory, whether through a carefully prepared cup of coffee or a proper British afternoon tea service.
Independent food businesses and family stories
Estaphan’s food reporting frequently centers on independent businesses and the people who run them, using their kitchens and counters as entry points into family life and community ties. In profiling a Massachusetts ice cream shop operated by seven siblings, she frames the shop as both a workplace and a shared family project, focusing on how the rhythms of a small business shape the children’s daily lives and relationships. Her work also includes visits to specialty food retailers such as Duck Soup, where she documents a full British Afternoon Tea experience and shows how a single shop can become a gateway to another culture’s rituals around food and hospitality. She extends this approach to farms and producers, visiting a farm in her capacity as a Chronicle reporter and producer to connect viewers with where ingredients originate and the people who cultivate them. Across these pieces, she treats food venues as settings for personal stories rather than just places to eat, emphasizing the owners’ voices, family dynamics and the sense of community built around their tables.
Culinary history and culture on Chronicle
Beyond individual businesses, Estaphan uses food to explore historical and cultural themes, especially when covering beverages and long-standing local traditions. In a Chronicle segment on coffee, she traces coffee’s deep roots in Boston, unpacking how the drink is woven into the city’s commercial and social history and how contemporary café culture reflects that legacy. She approaches food history as narrative rather than lecture, grounding abstract timelines in specific locations, people and cups of coffee that viewers can recognize. This same instinct shows in her coverage of events like British Afternoon Tea at Duck Soup, where she treats the ritual as a cultural performance, explaining not just what is served but what the ceremony means to those who participate and host. Her food stories often function as cultural profiles, using menus, recipes and serving customs to explain how communities define themselves and pass traditions forward.
Long-form, award-winning storytelling
Estaphan’s food beat sits within her broader role as a Chronicle reporter and producer at WCVB Channel 5, a station affiliated with ABC. She is recognised as a five-time Emmy Award winning journalist, a level of acclaim that reflects her ability to craft polished, emotionally resonant segments from everyday subjects. Her professional bio highlights experience that extends beyond food, including work as a NASA-NAAMES mission journalist and storytelling around “fire, food and heart-warming stories,” underscoring her comfort blending science, environment and human-interest reporting. Colleagues and subjects describe her as a skilled storyteller; one collaborator on an ABC Chronicle segment publicly called her “a class act,” offering a glimpse of the trust she builds with interviewees whose lives and livelihoods she features on air. For communications teams, her track record on Chronicle means that when she covers a food-related story, she is likely to treat it as a narrative arc—with time for context, characters and setting—rather than a brief mention, and to place the food itself inside a larger frame of community, culture and personal experience.
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.
Alice Mannette
Alice Mannette blends service journalism with narrative reporting about everyday life, using local food and gathering places to tell broader stories about community. She writes for the St. Cloud Times, focusing on practical guides to ice cream shops, wineries and other neighborhood businesses. Her coverage turns questions like where to eat and what to do this weekend into portraits of local entrepreneurs, weekend plans and the social life of her area. She reports food and drink as usable guides while tracing local history, culture and public safety. She also covers how people record their lives, writing features on diaries, family history and new books that examine archives and memory. Alongside this, she reports civic and public safety news and produces USA TODAY Network service pieces that compile clear, concrete resources for people dealing with storms and other emergencies.
Amanda Mactas
Amanda Mactas links food news, pop culture, and practical consumer advice, showing how brands, products, and personalities appear in everyday eating. She is an associate editor at Delish, reporting news and feature stories that span celebrity-driven launches, competitive eating, value-focused roundups, and taste tests. Her beat covers food culture, event-driven food deals, brand campaigns, product testing, grocery finds, and shopping guides, all with a clear service angle. She reports through specific products, personalities, and major sports days or holidays, using them to explain broader trends, marketing tactics, and consumer value. Beyond Delish, she works as a freelance writer and editor across food, travel, health, and lifestyle outlets, profiling founders, public markets, restaurant culture, wellness, and travel, and tying everyday eating to place, wellness, and routine in accessible, utility-focused prose.
Amelia Jones
Amelia Jones is a Fox 4 News reporter who makes major moments in Texas life feel close by centering ordinary people, often through food, fandom and everyday routines. She now reports across web, on-air and social video, keeping the camera and narrative on fans’ faces, crowd noise and local venues as she covers World Cup visitors trying Tex-Mex, FIFA fan festivals and standout supporters whose energy defines the stadium mood. She explains state legislative debates on issues like abortion pills in clear, practical terms, breaking down complex bills and legal analysis into real-world consequences. She reports on trials, crime, explosions and traumatic incidents through witnesses, victims and families, and spends time with small business owners and neighborhood groups in East Dallas. She joined Fox 4 News in 2023 and links daily life to the larger forces that shape Texas.