Meet Our New Contributors

Meet the newest contributors for the Local Palate! In our pursuit of the best places to eat and grab a drink around the South, we’ve turned to the locals who know their areas best. These food and culture savants in Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, and Austin are helping us launch the Local Palate‘s latest series of regional newsletters, Snapshot.

Through four, bi-monthly newsletters dedicated to dishing out the insider’s scoop in Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, and Austin, these writers deliver expert tips about the Vietnamese spots they love, breweries they can’t live without, and the chefs and business owners shaping their communities. It’s a bite-sized, three-minute read that gives you a glimpse—a snapshot—of these regions’ colorful culinary scenes. So, open your inbox, and join us for a little armchair travel.

New Contributors for the Latest Newsletter Series

Mike Jordan

Atlanta

Mike Jordan is a Nashville-born, Alabama-raised “ATLien” who serves as editor-in-chief at Butter.ATL, an Atlanta media company dedicated to covering the city’s dynamic culture. He’s also a frequent contributor at the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, Atlanta Magazine, Eater, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Resy, and others, covering food, business, entertainment, technology, politics and more.

Sign Up to Receive Snapshot: Atlanta

Erin Byers Murray

Snapshot: Nashville

Okay, not a new contributor, per se, but well-deserving of a shout-out: Erin Byers Murray joined the Local Palate in 2020 as editor in chief and oversees the editorial content across all platforms, including the magazine, the Local Palate Marketplace, the website, and social media channels. She began working with the magazine as a freelance writer in 2015, and brings with her 20 years of magazine editing and food reporting experience. As for Nashville, she’s been here a decade and keeps a constant watch on the food scene’s breakneck evolution. Murray is an award-winning author and cookbook collaborator, and her work has appeared in publications from the Boston Globe to Food & Wine.

Sign Up to Receive Snapshot: Nashville 

Asha Ellison

Snapshot: Charlotte

It’s not unusual to hear Asha Ellison say, “Let your plate be your passport.” A native Floridian who was born and raised in Orlando, Ellison doesn’t take for granted the rich and diverse cultures–and flavors–that surrounded her most of her life. Because of her Miami-born mother’s influence and the ten years she called Tampa Bay home, Ellison has an affinity for coastal and Caribbean cuisine, and enjoys immersing herself in enriching creative and cultural experiences.

After earning a bachelor’s in mass communications–magazine journalism from the University of South Florida, and a master’s in mental health counseling from Nova Southeastern University, Ellison moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2016 for a fresh start in life. Ellison, who is a marketing and communications director by day, is now also a Local Palate newsletter contributor covering all things food, drink and culture in Charlotte and surrounding neighborhoods. When she’s not off eating the world, Ellison loves taking road trips to charming cities and towns along the east coast, enjoying nature, hiking, loving on her thirteen-year-old cockapoo, Zuma, her nieces and nephew, exploring museums and jamming to live music under dazzling lights.

Sign Up to Receive Snapshot: Charlotte

Veronica Meewes

Snapshot: Austin

Veronica Meewes found her way to the kitchen at a young age, mainly through a series of avant-garde kitchen experiments very loosely inspired by the recipes in her mom’s bright orange, three-ring Betty Crocker cookbook. She studied creative writing and sociology at Sarah Lawrence College before moving to Austin, where she writes about food, beverage and travel for a number of media outlets.

Her work has appeared in Forbes Travel Guide, Food & Wine, Texas Monthly, Tasting Table, GOOD, PUNCH, The Today Show, the Local Palate, Serious Eats, Austin Monthly, Texas Highways, and more. In 2015, she published the Fish Sauce Cookbook: 50 Umami-Packed Recipes From Around the Globe, to demystify fish sauce and its many uses, and she served as editor of a ‘zine-inspired community cookbook called the Odd Duck Almanac in 2019. Most recently, she worked on Texas-focused guides for the UK-based Knowhere and an app-based travel guide called Wanderly, as well as a Hill Country chapter for Fodor’s latest printed guide, publishing this spring.

By day, she is a wine buyer for Saba San’s, a natural wine and sake shop and club in East Austin. She is also a member of the Austin branch of Les Dames d’Escoffier and she serves on the board of Slow Food Austin, planning community events to showcase the farmers, chefs and producers who embody the nonprofit’s mission of promoting food that is good, clean and fair. Follow her on Instagram @wellfedlife and visit www.veronicameewes.com.