Waxin’s West Palm Beach: Swedish Comfort on Clematis

Some corners in downtown West Palm Beach feel too prominent to stay empty for long…

This one, situated at Clematis and Olive, in the former Design Within Reach store space, has been sitting in the city’s line of sight for years. That made Waxin’s arrival feel less like a quiet opening and more like a long-awaited reveal. The West Palm outpost was originally expected in 2023, so by the time it finally arrived, anticipation had been allowed to marinate properly.

And to its credit, Waxin’s understands the assignment. The West Palm location leans into the brand’s Swedish-American identity with a design-forward setting. The concept around it is built to serve more than one kind of night out: dinner, cocktails, a lively weekend bar scene, and even Stockholm Society, the adjacent members-only club tied to Patrik Waxin’s expanding hospitality orbit. Official materials describe a restaurant that shifts gears on weekends with DJs and nightlife energy, while tourism coverage previewed a layered setup with a cocktail lounge feel and a members-only component.

The broader Waxin’s story helps explain why this place feels so specific. The family moved from Sweden to Florida more than a decade ago, missed the food and hospitality of home, and built the first Waxin’s in Palm Beach Gardens in June 2020. Naples opened in January 2025, and West Palm followed as the third location. One of the more charming brand details: the name “Waxin’s” came from Patrik’s children, who pushed him to use the family name.

The Room

On Saturday night, reservations online looked fully booked for the time we wanted, which usually means one of two things: either the place is genuinely slammed, or the reservation grid is more dramatic than the dining room. Our party of three took the gamble and walked in anyway. To our surprise, there were plenty of seating options, and we chose the most entertaining one: a high-top in the bar area right by the window, with a front-row seat to the Clematis parade.

That turned out to be the right move.

Around 7:30 p.m., the room still felt like it was stretching. Comfortable. Composed. You could hear yourself think. But by 8:00, the bar had filled in with exactly the kind of Saturday-night crowd this place seems built for: people who weren’t quite ready to commit to where the night would end, only that it shouldn’t end at home. That dual personality is part of the appeal here: Waxin’s can do a quiet dinner if you catch it early, but it also clearly wants to be part of your night out. That tracks with how the restaurant presents itself, including walk-in seating and a weekend transition into a livelier cocktail-and-music mood.

Service That Actually Guides the Meal

Our server, Isaac, was prompt, warm, and refreshingly good at the thing too many servers skip: listening. Instead of rattling off favorites like a human autocomplete, he paid attention to what kind of experience we wanted and steered us toward dishes and drinks that made the meal feel unmistakably Swedish without turning it into a history lesson.

That mattered here, because Waxin’s is at its best when it leans into its identity.

What We Ordered

We started with The Pink Potion, made with butterfly pea flower house-infused gin, Italicus, and Lillet Blanc. It arrives with a bit of theater. Yes, it changes color, but thankfully stops short of becoming one of those cocktails that exists mostly for Instagram and punishment. This one was light, elegant, and not too sweet, which already puts it ahead of half the pink drinks in South Florida. It had personality without sugar-bombing the table.

Then came the Swedish Style Caviar, and this is where the meal started telling you exactly what kind of restaurant Waxin’s wants to be. The caviar service is built around Kalix löjrom, or vendace roe from northern Sweden, one of the country’s best-known delicacies, protected by EU PDO status since 2010 and famously served at Nobel banquets and royal weddings. Waxin’s serves it the classic way, with red onion, chives, dill, lemon, crème fraîche, and butter-fried toast. It’s luxurious, yes, but also deeply cultural: less “look at me” caviar and more “this is what we grew up revering.”

For mains, we went with the Cod – The Swedish Way and Beef Rydberg.

The cod, listed on the menu with drawn butter, hand-peeled shrimp, horseradish, fingerling potatoes, egg, and dill, was one of those dishes that doesn’t try to seduce you with drama. It just quietly gets everything right. The fish was so tender it practically dissolved on contact, and the shrimp on top turned out to be more than a garnish. They gave the plate sweetness, salinity, and a little textural contrast against the softness of the cod. It was delicate, comforting, and deeply Nordic in the way it trusted simplicity to do the work.

The Beef Rydberg was the nostalgic one. Beef tenderloin, caramelized onions, potatoes, horseradish, egg yolk, mustard crème alongside meat and potatoes, all properly dressed. It was rich without feeling heavy, and for me, it landed somewhere personal. Being from the Nordic part of the world, Swedish food taps into the same emotional territory as Russian comfort cooking: that Saturday-night-dinner-in-mom’s-kitchen feeling, where the food is warm, familiar, and built to make the room feel cozy. This dish did exactly that. Not flashy. Not modern for the sake of modernity. Just cozy, satisfying, and strangely moving if you were raised anywhere near that flavor language.

Dessert, Then the Hotshot

Dessert was Chocolate & Cherry: baked chocolate cream, whipped chocolate mousse, marinated cherries, brownie crumble, and cherry ice cream (and it was a smart finish). Chocolate and cherry is one of those combinations that can go either deeply elegant or aggressively old-fashioned; here it leaned elegant. Split three ways, it was just enough to satisfy without tipping the meal into excess.

Isaac then recommended the Hotshot, which, in hindsight, was non-negotiable. Waxin’s practically treats it as a house ritual, and for good reason. Vanilla liqueur, hot espresso, and whipped cream sounds like something that should either be too sweet or too gimmicky, but it was neither. It was creamy, warm, refreshing in that oddly Scandinavian way, and easy to see why it has become one of the brand’s signatures.

Final Thoughts

Waxin’s West Palm Beach works because it gives Clematis something it didn’t quite have in this exact form: a restaurant that can be both culturally specific and socially useful. You can come here for a proper dinner. You can come here for cocktails at the window and watch downtown pass by like live theater. You can come early for conversation, or later when the bar starts humming and the room shifts into Saturday-night mode.

Most importantly, the food doesn’t get lost in the vibe.

That’s the trap with so many much-anticipated openings: the room arrives before the kitchen does. But Waxin’s feels more settled than that. The cod was beautifully handled, the Beef Rydberg had soul, the caviar service felt like a real nod to Swedish culinary identity, and the Hotshot sealed the deal with exactly the kind of playful, slightly indulgent flourish a place like this should end on.

For anyone raised on European comfort food, it lands like a little homecoming. For everyone else, it’s a very good reason to reconsider what Swedish food can look like when it’s done with style.