Bettina Makalintal

1 week ago | eater.com | Bettina Makalintal

Counter service at Sabine. Courtesy of Sabine Café Bettina Makalintal is a senior reporter at Eater.com, covering restaurant trends, home cooking advice, and all the food you can't escape on your TikTok FYP. Previously, she worked for Bon Appétit and VICE's Munchies.

1 week ago | eater.com | Bettina Makalintal

Earlier this year, food creator and cookbook author Justine Doiron, also known as @justine_snacks, announced on Instagram that she’d be hosting a trip to Sicily in October: a week for her and 12 fans to sightsee and eat together. Supporters quickly snapped up the dozen spots to join Doiron on visits to markets, farms, and archaeological sites, with most of each day structured around a group venture. Doiron’s trip is one of a handful of creator-led tours of Italy this year organized by Via Rosa.

3 weeks ago | eater.com | Bettina Makalintal

Wonho Frank Lee Bettina Makalintal is a senior reporter at Eater.com, covering restaurant trends, home cooking advice, and all the food you can't escape on your TikTok FYP. Previously, she worked for Bon Appétit and VICE's Munchies. A version of this post originally appeared on May 14, 2025, in Eater and Punch’s newsletter Pre Shift, a biweekly newsletter for the industry pro that sources first-person accounts from the bar and restaurant world.

3 weeks ago | eater.com | Bettina Makalintal

As a person with a savory tooth, I do not often eat cake. However, I am also a Leo. I don’t align very much with that analysis, save for one big exception: I treat my birthday as though it’s basically a national holiday, and I want everyone in my life to treat their birthdays similarly, to briefly indulge in the fantasy of being the center of the entire universe. A day — okay, if I’m honest, a week — of celebrating at this magnitude deserves a good cake. My preference?

4 weeks ago | eater.com | Bettina Makalintal

During a recent visit to Kalaya, a popular Thai restaurant in Philadelphia, I ended a meal with a Thai tea tiramisu. To swap out one caffeinated drink for another was a clever play, and the addition of lime curd gave it a jolt of brightness. Yet, lush in texture and lightly sweet, it still called to mind tiramisu. Not long before that, at Brooklyn bistro the Snail, I had a “chocosu.” Conceptually reminiscent of chocoflan, it featured tiramisu assembled atop charcoal-black chocolate cake.