BEST CHEF NEW YORK STATE: Bruce Wieszala

Bruce Wieszala, Beacon Grille

185 Allen Street, Buffalo, NY 14201

Bruce Wieszala has won Buffalo Spree’s Best of WNY Best Chef honors two years running (2025, 2026), while his restaurant, Beacon Grille, took Best New Restaurant in 2025 and Best Restaurant Ambiance in 2026. At Beacon Grille, which he owns with his wife, Amanda, Wieszala cooks over an Argentinian-style wood-fired grill and follows a low-waste, snout-to-tail philosophy, grinding innards into pâté, frying skin into chicharrónes, and rendering fat for baked goods.

Wieszala trained for a decade in Atlanta, working under Guenter Seeger, Linton Hopkins (competing on “Iron Chef America” as Hopkins’ sous chef) and Michael Tuohy, whose wood-fired, farm-to-table style inspired Beacon Grille’s kitchen. Upon returning to Buffalo in 2008, when he found few kitchens knew how to break down a whole animal, Wieszala taught butchery and charcuterie classes at culinary schools and conferences, showing hundreds of Western New Yorkers how to break down whole pigs, lambs and cattle. In between, he helmed several Buffalo kitchens, most notably Tabree.

Beyond dozens of fundraisers for chefs and farms in need, the Wieszalas have created an environment that prizes team well-being as much as sourcing or cooking. Before service, Beacon’s staff shares a meal and a mental health check-in, an intentional effort, the Wieszalas say, to build a place their team wants to work. The restaurant’s late-night menu nods to the neighborhood’s history as home to artists, the LGBTQ+ community and late-night revelers, and a place where restaurant industry workers, from dishwashers to owners, can find respite and community after a long shift.