Sarah Nash
Sarah Nash is a staff writer at Secret Los Angeles whose food writing is embedded in practical, discovery-led coverage of how people eat, gather, and explore the city. Her beat combines food news, openings, and indulgent treats with guides to festivals, art installations, and pop culture events, so dining is almost always framed as part of a wider day or night out. She works in an accessible, list-forward format that gives readers concrete options rather than abstract trends.
Food news, openings, and everyday indulgence
Nash’s food coverage leans toward openings and distinct concepts that promise a specific kind of treat or experience, rather than general restaurant criticism. She has highlighted America’s first-ever soft serve made from 100% authentic Japanese Hokkaido dairy milk, treating its expansion to two Los Angeles locations as both a novelty dessert and a new destination for readers looking for something different from standard ice cream. In another direction, she reports on major fast-food developments, such as the planned opening of seven new outlets by a well-known burger chain, framing chain growth as part of the city’s evolving food landscape. Her food stories regularly foreground the details that matter to the eater — ingredients, origin stories, number of locations, and what sets a spot apart — with clear takeaways about what readers can expect when they visit.
She also covers food as a matter of access and policy, not just taste. In a piece on Los Angeles street food vendors winning the right to legally serve customers anywhere in the city, Nash presents the change as a “big win” for vendors and for everyday street eating, emphasizing how regulation directly shapes the choices available on the sidewalk. This combination of indulgent dessert coverage, chain expansion news, and street-food policy signals a beat that tracks food as both pleasure and infrastructure — how and where people can actually eat, whether that is at a niche soft-serve counter, a drive-thru, or a cart on a newly legal corner.
Numbered guides and “things to do” rundowns
A defining part of Nash’s output is her numbered “things to do” coverage, where food sits alongside other activities in curated lists for specific days or seasons. Recent work includes a guide to “28 delightful things to do this weekend in Los Angeles: July 10–12” and a “20 spectacular things to do in Los Angeles this July 2026,” both structured as list articles that give readers multiple options in a single read. The language in these headlines — “delightful,” “spectacular” — points to a tone that is upbeat and experience-focused, promising not just information but a mood. Within these guides, food and drink typically appear as part of a mix that can include pop-ups, festivals, public spaces, and cultural events, positioning a meal or treat as one stop in a full day out.
Her list format is consistent across topics, whether she is highlighting hot-ticket events or more niche outings. Items are clearly separated, titled, and numbered, making the pieces easy to scan for a quick decision — a structure that serves readers who are choosing between multiple restaurants, food festivals, or food-adjacent experiences. For communications teams, this means her coverage often lives in roundups where a venue or concept is one of many options, and where practical details and a concise description matter more than long-form narrative.
Food within culture, art, and community
Although food is her primary beat, Nash situates it within a wider cultural and community context. She has written about an event described as the “ultimate showcase of Mexican film and culture” arriving in Los Angeles for a limited run, an assignment that intertwines cinema, heritage, and the city’s role as host. She covers the city’s stature as a destination for major concert tours and music festivals, giving readers a sense of how large-scale entertainment cycles through local venues and neighborhoods. Her reporting on Star Wars Celebration returning to Los Angeles extends that lens to fandom and pop culture, treating conventions as significant markers on the city’s calendar. Food vendors, themed drinks, and nearby dining options naturally sit around these events, and her beat keeps them in the same frame as the performances and installations themselves.
Nash’s work also includes community and public-art stories where space and memory are as central as any menu. She has covered the grand opening of a long-awaited AIDS monument, emphasizing memory, community, and hope in the way the physical structure invites people to gather. She has spotlighted a billboard project that turns everyday advertising surfaces into bold public art, presenting it as a reimagining of the city’s visual environment. These assignments show that she approaches the city as an interconnected landscape of food, art, memorials, and shared spaces, and her food pieces benefit from that broader sensitivity to how people occupy and experience place.
Voice, format, and what she brings to a story
Across topics, Nash favors concise, descriptive headlines and service-driven formats that tell readers exactly what they will get: how many things to do, how many new restaurant locations, or what specific legal change affects their options. Her tone stays positive and inviting even when she addresses policy or history, as in the street-vendor ruling or the AIDS monument coverage, where the focus is on wins, community, and new opportunities rather than abstract controversy. She tends to structure stories around clear hooks — “first-ever” soft serve, a festival’s limited run, a major convention’s return — and then build out concrete details that make those hooks actionable, such as dates, locations, and what is distinctive about the experience.
For food-led stories, this approach means she is most engaged when a venue or product has a strong concept, a noteworthy milestone, or a clear role in the city’s wider culture, whether that is an imported ingredient tradition, a beloved chain’s expansion, or a law that changes where people can buy a snack. Her beat at Secret Los Angeles is not about deep critical reviews or chef profiles; it is about mapping the ever-changing landscape of places to eat and things to do, with food consistently woven into the way she explains how to spend time in the city.
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.