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?
Q: What are some of those changes?
Forster: I was at Vera for its first two years of existence, then the Aroma group, then Toutant. The knowledge level of the guests has certainly increased. They are expecting higher quality. They’re asking for certain things, especially in the world of wine.
There’s so much more talent. So many people came home in the last like 15 years from being in other cities. They took that experience back to Buffalo and just made it so much better. The quality has gone up exponentially. The food, the quality of knowledge, professionalism.
This is what we do for a living. Not another risk-averse person who just wants to open another Italian American restaurant, for example. It’s wanting to give Buffalo something better.
Q: Last year, when you got your first James Beard Award nomination, what effects did it have?
Forster: Increased business, increased exposure.
Rials: We were fortunate the beginning before even this press happened to have a really good clientele base coming from like, Canadian area, Toronto and south. Pre-COVID, every single week it felt like people were coming to visit us. That was great.
The diversity is very interesting, because you get the people that are watching the nightly news. They’re here, and they’re excited. They want to see what we’re doing. They really know nothing about us, but they saw us on TV, and they’re like, ‘Hey, this is kind of cool. We want to check it out.’
Then there’s the travelers. People are coming from New York City specifically because they see us having gotten this recognition, and I think it’s probably the same for Ryan (Fernandez) now too, because the lines are down the street for his restaurant.
Forster: People are googling “best restaurants Buffalo” and “James Beard Buffalo.” A couple last week said “We googled ‘James Beard Buffalo’ and you’re the first one.” … we get all of these travelers you know, from out of town. It’s honestly reaching the Buffalo market that is almost more of a challenge for us.
Rials: We like to play with tables, give them an experience. They’ll get a dessert or an appetizer, and she comes up with something that pairs so perfectly that it changes the experience, whether it’s like contrasting or it’s complimentary. The guest was already having a great time, and then they start to mix in together, and their experience becomes something else.
Then they start realizing what we’re capable of doing here. How harmonious the two of us and the boys in the kitchen work, and how we can combine things so well. There’s other places in the city making their wine programs better and their cocktail programs better. But I don’t think they necessarily have enough experience to put those things together correctly.
Forster: Our menu can be intimidating for people, right? But what I want to tell people is: We’re professionals, we have this very in-depth knowledge of everything that we do, because we are here day in, day out. We’ll guide you through it.
You’re a steak and potato guy? We’ve got steak and potatoes. It might be prepared differently or it might be a cut that you haven’t seen before, but like you can come here and have an incredible meal with incredible wine or an incredible cocktail. It’s OK if it’s not something you’ve had before.
Q: Be brave.
Forster: We definitely had people who told us after the meal or left a review online, saying “I thought it was gonna be really kind of like pompous. But our servers literally took care of us, made it feel so much more welcoming than we thought it might be. That, I think, is something that also sets us apart.
We’re not here to be snooty. Why would we do that?
Q: You sell potato chips.
Forster: Potato chips. We have a shot and a beer for $7. Whatever level of dining that they want, they can find it here.
Rials: We had a very long discussion, when we first started this restaurant. We wanted people to be able to come in, literally have a beer and a shot, maybe have one or two little bites, and be able to be out of here for 20 bucks. Let them have a very inexpensive experience, a place to come and hang out and check out what’s going on.
If they want to try more food, go for it. But that chance to come in and just have one glass of wine and a bite of anchovy toast, and be like: that’s cool. And then go do something else. That’s totally fine.
Waxlight Bar a Vin
27 Chandler St., waxlightbaravin.com
Hours: 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Friday, Saturday (bar open later). Closed Sunday-Tuesday.
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