Demystifying Waxlight, the Beard restaurant with a $7 shot-and-a-beer
Waxlight Bar a Vin partners make their case for Buffalo-area diners coming by to check what the fuss is about
With back-to-back James Beard nominations, Waxlight Bar a Vin has become a restaurant that travelers make sure to book whenever they land in Buffalo.
In the 716 area code, it’s a harder sell, partly because many Buffalo-area restaurant customers have never seen anything like Waxlight’s menu, full of ingredients and dishes they’ve never heard of before. Waxlight aims to balance that adventurousness with the everyday: a shot and a beer is $7, and a plate of meat and potatoes that’ll make you happy is always on the menu.
Opened in 2019 by a team of restaurant veterans, its uniqueness comes from the talents of its partners. Joseph Fenush and Edward Forster in the kitchen, Jessica Forster and Tony Rials in the dining room and bar, dispensing drink-pairing advice that can send your dinner to the next level.
Its space at 27 Chandler St. is as fine-tuned as the menu. Its acoustics mean you can have a conversation at the bar, or anywhere else in the room. Its design, by Bhakti Sharma of The Biba Studio, was honored by the Buffalo chapter of the International Interior Design Association’s Buffalo chapter last year.
Forster will be absent from Waxlight next month. She’ll be in Santa Barbara, one of 10 women in North America chosen to attend the second annual Court of Master Sommeliers Americas Women’s Symposium, all expenses paid.
The Court of Master Sommeliers America and the Somm Foundation chose Forster and nine other women pursuing advanced sommelier certifications for a 3.5-day immersion program with winery visits and lots of discussions with female master sommeliers and women in wine.
After Waxlight’s second Beard nomination earlier this month, I got the chance to talk to Jessica Forster and Tony Rials about where Waxlight came from, and where it’s headed.
Q: Did you start Waxlight Bar a Vin because you figured if you were going to dedicate your life to your job, you should be working for yourself?
Rials: We realized we all had specialized skills. By the time we started this, we were each 15 years into the hospitality industry, specializing in different fields. At that point, it was more than just saying, ‘Hey, I don't want to do this for someone else anymore.’ It was more like, ‘If we have the right team together, we can create something that's truly unique.’
Q: And you did. Most restaurant owners are risk averse, they feel like they have to play it safe. You guys are playing a different game: just be awesome. In Buffalo, that’s a tough pull, but you decided to make a stand at home.
Forster: Very plainly, the cost of doing business here is certainly less. And we have all worked in Buffalo for so long, two of the four of us are from here, and we feel like it's home. Since we got into the restaurant industry in Buffalo, it's changed so much. Why not make it even better? Why not be a part of that?
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