Helen Freund is an award-winning investigative journalist and a food and travel writer with more than two decades of experience. She is currently the senior food and dining critic at the Tampa Bay Times where she covers the Tampa Bay area’s evolving culinary landscape. Before landing at the Times in 2019, Freund was the restaurant critic and dining editor at Gambit Weekly in New Orleans, a criminal justice reporter and features writer at The New Orleans Advocate/Times Picayune and a general assignment reporter at The New York Post. In addition to her reporting, she worked as a ghostwriter and recipe tester, and spent several years working as a catering chef in New York City.

Her work has appeared in a broad range of regional and national publications, including The New York Post, The New Orleans Advocate, The Times-Picayune, Seattle Magazine, Gambit Weekly, The Lens, Reuters, Eater, Extra Crispy, Cosmopolitan and Vice.

Freund’s reporting has been recognized by several organizations, including the Florida Society of News Editors, Society for Features Journalism, Investigative Reporters & Editors, the Harvard Kennedy School Goldsmith Awards, the Press Club of New Orleans, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Association of Food Journalists.

She attended culinary school at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and received her B.A. at the University of Washington where she majored in communications/journalism and sociocultural anthropology.

She is available for writing, editing, coaching, speaking engagements and recipe testing and development.

Freund lives in St. Petersburg, Florida with her partner, Jackie, and their two senior dogs, Piper and Sadie Mae.