Nicolle Monico
Nicolle Monico connects food, dating, travel, and wellness through first-person stories and practical guides that show how people eat, meet, and unwind in and around the city. She is an award-winning writer and the director of creative projects and digital editor at San Diego Magazine, with more than 16 years of experience. Alongside her editorial leadership, she maintains an active writing portfolio that spans restaurant coverage, dating columns, and experiential features.
Food, drink, and where to go now
Food and drink coverage is a central part of Monico’s work, often framed as where to go and what to try right now. She has written about a Japanese curry concept that moved from the stadium to a neighborhood restaurant, tracking how a popular ballpark dish becomes a full-service destination in the city’s dining landscape. In multi-writer packages such as “Best Of San Diego: Food & Drink,” she contributes to roundups that highlight standout restaurants, bars, and dishes, positioning them within broader “best-of” coverage. She also shares credit on service pieces like “Celebrate Spring With These 5 Outdoor Happy Hours,” which spotlight outdoor bars and patios, menu highlights, and drink specials, giving readers time-specific, place-specific recommendations. Her food stories tend to be embedded in lifestyle angles—happy hours, neighborhood openings, and destination meals—rather than standalone reviews, making them useful for connecting culinary trends to how people actually spend their time.
Dating, love, and life in the city
Monico is a prominent voice on dating and relationships, leading a recurring series that looks closely at the local dating scene. Her column “Unhinged, A Dating Series” follows her experiences and questions around modern dating, with installments that include Q&A features and essays on topics such as dating after an unhealthy relationship and what simple gestures can do to secure a second date. A piece like “10 San Diego Pools to Meet Your Soulmate” ties dating advice directly to place, turning ordinary amenities into social settings where readers might meet partners. She has edited or curated collections such as “12 Reader-Submitted Love Letters to San Diego,” where community contributions anchor a broader narrative about affection for the city itself. An editor’s note under the “Love on the Brain” theme has her looking back at some of the magazine’s more offbeat dating stories, reinforcing her role as both columnist and editor in this space. Social coverage around her work notes that she launched her dating column around Valentine’s Day to seek advice from relationship experts and dissect contemporary dating, underscoring a blend of personal perspective and expert input. Together, these pieces distinguish her as someone who uses local spots—pools, bars, neighborhoods—as a framework for exploring intimacy, connection, and the realities of dating.
Travel, wellness, and personal essays
Beyond food and dating, Monico writes travel and wellness features that are openly personal. In “Chasing Spiritual Enlightenment in Sedona,” she approaches travel as a search for meaning, tying the geography and local experiences to questions of self and spirituality. “Burnout and Birria in Guadalajara” similarly pairs a destination with a specific dish, using a trip to explore exhaustion, recovery, and the comfort found in food. On the health side, she has reported on insomnia through “Can BrainEcho Technology Help Treat Insomnia?,” describing how she tried sound-based technology after dealing with sleep problems for two decades. A feature in the magazine’s sports section follows her enlistment of pro runner Chari Hawkins to help her find her stride again, combining expert guidance with a candid account of rebuilding a fitness habit. Essays like “A Note to the Childless on Mother’s Day” show her turning personal milestones and social expectations into reflective pieces that speak to readers in similar situations. This cluster of travel, health, and personal essays marks her as a writer who uses her own experience as the narrative engine, while bringing in specialists and specific locations to ground the story.
Editorial leadership and curated packages
Monico’s official role as director of creative projects and digital editor means she sits at the center of the magazine’s digital storytelling. Magazine materials describe her as a managing figure in the digital operation, and editorial roundups cite her by name when discussing key series such as her dating column that explored the local dating scene in depth. She regularly fronts and supports major packages, including marketing and voting toolkits for the “Best of San Diego” Reader’s Choice Awards, where she walks businesses and readers through nomination windows, voting timelines, and promotional strategies. She has also overseen or contributed to retrospective projects like “The Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous Covers of SDM’s Past,” in which she helps sift through hundreds of past covers to identify the standouts and the more questionable experiments. Collections of the magazine’s “best articles” of a given year call out her work alongside that of other staffers, situating her dating series and features within the outlet’s core editorial identity. Across these responsibilities, she operates as both a creator and a curator, shaping how food, love, travel, and wellness stories are presented and packaged for the magazine’s audience.
Throughout her body of work, Monico’s distinguishing thread is the way she fuses first-person narrative with service journalism: restaurant openings tied to lived nights out, dating columns linked to specific pools and bars, and wellness stories grounded in trips, technologies, and experts. That mix gives her coverage a personal, place-based texture that goes beyond a generic food or lifestyle beat.
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.