Polly Anna Rocha
Polly Anna Rocha covers the San Antonio restaurant scene as MySA’s food reporter, combining service news, reported features and first-person dining pieces that foreground how local spots actually work for everyday diners. Her coverage is distinguished by a close tracking of openings and closures, a sustained focus on affordability and neighborhood character, and attention to food safety and operational issues that affect when and how people eat out. Alongside her beat reporting, she brings a broader culture-writing background to profiles and debates that show how food fits into the city’s wider life.
Restaurant Openings, Closures and Culinary Landmarks
Rocha spends significant time documenting the churn of San Antonio restaurants, from long-running institutions to new arrivals. She has reported on a steakhouse closing after 73 years of service, framing the news in terms of the restaurant’s long history and the way it announced its final days, and she has covered a Tex-Mex spot in a historic Pearl space shutting down after three years in a room with more than a century of history. Her work includes pieces on a longtime bar quietly shuttering after 19 years and roundups of restaurants and bars that closed in a given month, where she notes how closures compare with openings and walks through each shuttered space.
She also follows restaurant rebrands and failures, writing about a San Antonio eatery from a star chef that closed after a seafood-focused relaunch, using the pivot and its outcome as a lens on risk and positioning in the local market.
Openings receive similar attention, not just as announcements but as shifts in the dining landscape. Rocha has covered new locations for beloved burger chains, the arrival of a booming Mediterranean chain’s first San Antonio restaurant, and a shuttered UFC gym getting a “tasty makeover” as a new eatery moves in. In her reporting on Bucán Rodeo, she details how the Puerto Rican barbecue truck is relocating to Broadway News, explaining how the move will change its audience, open it up to families and add breakfast service.
Profiles of an “extra special” eatery taking over a former hot dog joint and stories about iconic spaces changing tenants show her interest in the way specific addresses carry culinary and neighborhood memories.
Budget Bites and Accessible Dining
A clear through-line in Rocha’s work is affordability and accessibility, which she treats as central to how people eat rather than a niche topic.
Her Budget Bites column at Mittman Fine Foods focuses on a small Eastside taqueria, emphasizing its reputation for carne guisada, her own near-mishap during a visit and how the staff’s customer service and the restaurant’s charm turn the experience into a neighborhood story. Price points and value are woven into the narrative: she calls out specific tacos and plates while noting that the stop fits within a budget-minded week. In her coverage of a $15.99 Indian buffet, she describes the Medical Center concentration of Indian restaurants, explains the all-day buffet format and walks through what diners get for the fixed price based on her own lunchtime visit.
Rocha applies the same lens to burger coverage, from an adult burger shop gaining instant cult status to a tiny shack serving specialty burgers under $8. In the Mad Mack’s Burger Co. story, she reports on the shack’s recovery after a vehicle strike, then details her experience ordering a mushroom Swiss burger priced at $7.99 and notes that even double-patty options stay under $12. Her lists of the “best restaurants in San Antonio right now” and debates over the city’s best chicken-fried steak weave together reader opinions, local favorites and her assessments, often highlighting spots that deliver strong value rather than only high-end destinations.
This mix of hands-on tasting, clear mention of costs and attention to small operators sets her apart from more purely promotional food coverage.
Food News, Chains and Safety
Beyond individual restaurants, Rocha handles food news as a beat, including chains, new concepts and safety issues. She is the contact for MySA’s San Antonio Food News roundup, which is positioned as a quick catch-up on menu changes, openings and pop-ups across the city. Her headlines in this vein include first looks at Applebee’s-IHOP dual-concept stores, deep dives into snacks at San Antonio’s first Teso Life, and coverage of seasonal items like pumpkin pie returning to the menu at a major barbecue chain.
These pieces are service-oriented: they explain how a combined chain restaurant works day-to-day, flag limited-time menu items and tell readers what is actually available at new specialty retailers.
Rocha also writes about food safety at a national scale, as in her report on shifting U.S. food recall trends in 2026 following a spike in 2025. That story uses a new report to chart changes in recall numbers and types, presenting key findings and what they suggest about the food system while connecting them back to consumer concerns. The piece sits alongside her local reporting, showing that she can move between neighborhood restaurant stories and broader industry data while maintaining a straightforward, explanatory tone.
Operations, Weather and Community Voices
Rocha’s beat extends into operational and environmental factors that affect restaurants, particularly when severe weather disrupts normal service. In her piece on heavy rain and storms, she lists businesses and restaurants that are closing or running limited hours because of hazardous roads, including larger attractions such as a theme park, and treats the article as a timely guide to who is open and who is not. This kind of coverage treats food reporting as practical infrastructure, helping readers understand real-time impacts on dining options rather than focusing solely on reviews.
Community voices and cultural angles appear throughout her portfolio. Rocha has profiled figures like the “Taco-Poet of Texas,” using their favorite taco spots as a way into discussions of creativity and culture. She covers break-ins at local Italian eateries by reporting what happened and then amplifying the restaurant’s call for public help, and she spotlights barbecue trucks described as “perfect” that have San Antonio “drooling,” stitching together owner perspectives and customer reactions. Her writing experience spans food, business, entertainment, culture and politics over roughly a decade, and her work has appeared in outlets including Teen Vogue, Eater, Thrillist, Autostraddle, Them, Out In SA, San Antonio Magazine, San Antonio Current and San Antonio Express-News. That broader portfolio informs a voice that treats restaurants as cultural actors and community hubs as much as places to eat.
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.