Waxlight Bar à Vin

Buffalo, New York

James Beard Awards: Outstanding Wine and Other Beverages Program (Semifinalist, 2025), Outstanding Wine & Other Beverages Program (2024), Outstanding Wine & Other Beverages Program (Semifinalist, 2023).

Waxlight Bar à Vin is a wine-focused restaurant and bar on Chandler Street in Buffalo's Black Rock neighborhood, run by the sommeliers and chefs who own it. The team includes certified sommeliers Tony Rials and Jess Railey-Forster and chef Joseph Fenush, formerly of Toutant. The by-the-glass list ranges across France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and New York's Seneca Lake. The cocktails come in two sections: "acid house," with drinks such as a sakura highball of cherry blossom vermouth, sake and soda, and "house of base," with an autumn negroni washed with brown butter and a bamboo built on vintage sherries. Beer and cider round it out, and the candlelit dining room sets a romantic mood.