Sophie Bolich
Sophie Bolich tracks how the city’s hospitality landscape shifts from week to week, connecting new openings, closures and regulatory decisions to the way people eat and drink. She covers bars and restaurants for Urban Milwaukee, with a beat that centers on food and drink businesses and the city policies that shape them. From June 2022 through August 2026 she serves as a reporter at the masthead, filing frequent stories on neighborhood venues, chains and independent operators that build a running record of the dining scene’s churn.
Now Serving and the City’s Hospitality Beat
Bolich’s recurring Now Serving column sets the tone for her work, packaging multiple short items on openings, closures, menu changes and events into a single service-oriented dispatch.
In these pieces she highlights items such as a self-guided coffee crawl, urban garden parties, speakeasies and mobile cafes, giving dates, locations and concise descriptions of each stop. The roundups balance novelty - including Southside vendors introducing tejuino, boba shops leaning into tiramisu and slushy-focused sports bars - with practical updates on grocery remodels, fruit truck returns and seasonal concessions at the Brewers’ ballpark. She also uses the format to surface food and drink festivals, state fair offerings and 414 Day deals, turning the column into a regular guide to what is new, what is closing and where readers can find specific experiences across the city’s hospitality scene.
Neighborhood Openings, Closures and Redevelopment
Outside the column, Bolich focuses on how food and drink businesses reshape individual corridors and neighborhoods.
She reports on new restaurants and cafes in areas such as Old North Milwaukee, Bronzeville, Villard Avenue and Clarke Square, describing concepts that range from brunch-focused cafes and soul food spots to snack shops and community-oriented coffee houses. Her coverage of projects like a grocery store proposed in a former discount supermarket, a community cafe planned for a vacant building and a lunch vendor seeking a permanent home in The Brewery District shows how hospitality and retail ventures are tied to wider efforts at economic development and business incubation.
In pieces such as her report on a downtown taco restaurant closing, she documents what the loss of a single dining room means for a block while situating the story within broader patterns of bar and restaurant shutdowns across neighborhoods. She consistently includes licensing status, projected opening timelines and stated plans for menus or programming, giving a structured picture of each project’s trajectory from proposal to opening or, in some cases, closure.
Licensing, Enforcement and Restaurant Risk
Bolich’s dining coverage stands out when City Hall enters the picture, as she follows licensing hearings, suspensions and enforcement actions that directly affect restaurants and bars.
She writes about the Licenses Committee opposing proposed nightclubs or weighing conditions on troubled venues, explaining how those decisions shape whether a concept can operate as planned. Her reporting on a Bay View bar and restaurant receiving a 15-day suspension, a Southside restaurant losing ten days of operations and a Taco Bell temporarily closing because of a manager’s conduct adds an investigative edge to the food beat. A story on the Paper Table food hall leaving tenants owing thousands and shuttering their restaurants goes further, documenting financial strain, disputed obligations and the wider fallout for small food businesses downtown. Across these articles she treats enforcement actions as part of the risk environment that independent restaurateurs and chains must navigate, not just isolated dramas, and she draws clear lines between licensing decisions, operating conditions and the stability of the hospitality sector.
Profiles, Festivals and Food Culture
Alongside openings and enforcement, Bolich devotes space to people and culture within the food scene.
Her Five Ingredients With a Foodie series introduces figures such as Ramses Alvarez and Soua Chang, using focused conversations about lesser-known ingredients to spotlight their cooking philosophies and creative approaches. She covers milestones like a long-running barbecue restaurant marking its 70th anniversary and breweries celebrating major birthdays, using these stories to show continuity and change within the city’s dining institutions.
Event guides for Oktoberfest celebrations, food and wine festival lineups and the foods that fuel the Riverwest 24 race provide structured rundowns of what is available, pairing beer releases, special menus and chef appearances with practical information on where and when to participate. Even when she moves slightly beyond pure food coverage - photographing new concessions at the ballpark, attending Angela Davis’s lecture on campus DEI debates or co-authoring a piece on Kamala Harris’s visit - she keeps attention on how public events intersect with place, amenities and community life.
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.