Rania Zayyat
Bufalina | Austin
NOVEMBER 2023
Since she was 17 years old, Rania Zayyat has worked in restaurants. She began her career as a host in a Houston catfish restaurant, and when she started community college, she joined the Landry’s group, working as a server. Though she started school on a journalism track, she moved over to cultural anthropology, something that would stick with her as her zeal for wine grew. In 2010, Zayyat took a serving job at Pappas Bros. Steakhouse, where she was able to work with a list of over 2,500 bottles. The beast of a wine program helped expand Zayyat’s encyclopedic Old World knowledge, which only grew when she moved up to Austin to open the upscale French restaurant, LaV, in her first role as a full-time sommelier.
When the restaurant suddenly closed in late 2015, Zayyat was feeling lost—she had moved to Austin specifically for this restaurant. After brief stints at The Four Seasons and June’s All Day, Zayyat and her now husband were having dinner at their favorite spot, Bufalina, when she heard that the natural wine bar and pizza restaurant might be hiring a server. Their list resonated with her, so she applied for the job. She worked her way up from server to wine director and dove headfirst into the world of low-intervention and biodynamic wines. Now a managing partner in the restaurant, Zayyat oversees a list of 600 selections, with a robust magnum section and a happy hour of half-off bottles under $100 (she cleverly prices a lot of interesting wines at $99). On top of this, Zayyat founded Lift Collective, a platform that advocates for equity and inclusion in the wine industry.
