Vicki Duong
Vicki Duong is a journalist and writer whose food coverage at The Georgia Straight focuses on intimate, insider views of local restaurants and the people and stories behind them. She describes herself as a girl-about-town, and her work leans into the everyday ways people eat, socialize, and discover new spots, from neighbourhood staples to family-run Italian institutions. Alongside food, she extends the same curiosity to city culture, events, fashion, and travel, giving her restaurant writing a broader lifestyle frame.
Neighbourhood restaurants and everyday deals
In her recent food stories for The Georgia Straight, Duong highlights how long-standing casual spots stay relevant and serve their communities. Her coverage of Cheap Monday at Budgies, a Mount Pleasant staple, focuses on the burrito shop as “the best detour on Broadway,” emphasizing both its loyal following and the way it responds to nearby construction with accessible deals. She writes about promotions and pricing not as side notes but as central to how locals experience the restaurant, positioning value and convenience as part of the story rather than background detail. This approach makes her food pieces especially useful for understanding how everyday diners use a place, not just what is on the menu.
Italian dining and new openings
Duong also covers openings and evolutions in the city’s Italian dining scene, with an emphasis on concept, atmosphere, and family ownership. In her feature on Rosalia Osteria, she introduces the restaurant as a new Yaletown spot bringing a pasta-focused menu and intimate osteria atmosphere to Mainland Street. The story traces how the family behind some of Vancouver’s favourite Italian restaurants expands with this osteria, framing the opening through continuity of family stewardship and the specific kind of experience they want guests to have. She pays attention to details like the osteria format, the focus on pasta, and the character of the room, giving a clear sense of what makes the opening different from other Italian options in the city. For pitchable stories, this shows she is drawn to openings where there is a distinct point of view—whether rooted in family history, menu focus, or neighbourhood fit.
City culture, comedy and exhibitions
Duong’s food writing sits within a broader city-culture beat that includes arts events, awards, and entertainment, which deepens her sense of how venues function as social spaces. She describes herself as always ready for a local comedy show or an iced matcha latte, and that mix of performance and cafe culture runs through her coverage. Her preview of Science World’s extreme sports exhibit, for example, blends practical information—dates, tickets, and location—with an invitation to explore the world of extreme sports through an interactive exhibition. She has written about the City of Vancouver Book Award submission period, linking literary recognition to the wider cultural calendar. Other work touches on topics like a documentary series about organ transplants, where she highlights both intensity and humanity, showing her interest in stories that connect individual experiences to broader systems and institutions. This cultural range gives her restaurant stories context: she understands how a bar, cafe, or osteria might sit within comedy nights, exhibits, and city events rather than in isolation.
Lifestyle, travel and the “IYKYK” side of the city
Beyond The Georgia Straight, Duong writes lifestyle and travel pieces for multiple publications, bringing an “IYKYK” sensibility to the places she covers. She is described as a journalist and contributor with a knack for uncovering the IYKYK side of Vancouver, signaling a preference for spots and experiences that regulars talk about more than tourists do. Her profile as a writer notes a passion for travel and lifestyle and lists work for outlets including The Georgia Straight and National Post, reflecting a portfolio that spans local culture pieces and broader lifestyle coverage. Professional summaries of her work state that she produces feature articles, interviews, and editorial pieces across top publications, which aligns with the mix of formats seen in her food and culture stories—reported features, event previews, and personality-driven pieces. For stories that intersect food, travel, and lifestyle, Duong is drawn to angles that reveal what insiders love about a place, whether that is a weeknight deal, a new osteria, or a cultural event that changes how residents engage with their city.
Across these areas, the through-line in Duong’s coverage is an emphasis on how people actually use and inhabit spaces—restaurants, venues, and neighbourhoods—and a preference for subjects that feel lived-in, accessible, and rooted in local routines. She is not only listing dishes or dates; she is situating them within the rhythms of comedy nights, exhibition seasons, and everyday detours for burritos or pasta, making her a distinctive voice on food and city life rather than a generic listings reporter.
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.