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I remember a few years ago when a local "green" grocery store swapped out polypropylene hot food bar containers for cardboard compostable containers.

I looked up the manufacturer of these "compostable" containers and discovered they keep oils out of the cardboard with a PFA coating. PFA-laden compost, just what any gardener would want. /s

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Yeah any wood pulp based food container is going to have coatings to block oils. and water. You're probably better off with plastic containers.

An alternative might be silicone coatings. Parchment paper used in cooking uses this. I worry about the impact of that on food cooked against the paper. Silicones can be biodegradable though -- one of the problems with exploiting methane-rich gas from decomposition in landfills is that it includes silicon-containing volatile compounds from decomposition of silicones. If you burn this in a combustion turbine the combustors and turbine blades get coated with glass.

Is wax paper not a viable substitute?

Not in a hot food bar, I think.

I've read that modern wax paper is indeed just PFAS coated but I haven't looked into the veracity of that.

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