Meet Chef Austyn.
Austyn McGroarty’s story as a chef began close to home.
Born in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, Austyn started working in small, locally owned restaurants around the Upstate as a teenager. What began as a job quickly became a craft. He learned the business from the ground up—working the line, learning from the chefs around him, and developing an appreciation for the independent restaurants and people that give a community its character.
His first opportunity as a sous chef brought him back to Travelers Rest at the Whistle Stop. It was during this time that Austyn also began working with euphoria Greenville, starting a relationship with the festival and Greenville’s culinary community that would continue throughout his career.
As his experience grew, so did the circle of chefs who influenced his cooking. Over the years, Austyn has had opportunities to work alongside and learn from chefs including Joe Cash of Scoundrel, Luke Owens of Native Fine Diner, Haydn Shaak of Restaurant 17, and fellow Chopped chef Dallas McGarity of The Fat Lamb. Each experience added something different to his approach—technique, discipline, creativity, hospitality, and the confidence to eventually develop a culinary voice of his own.
In 2019, Austyn co-founded Woodside Bistro in Greenville. The restaurant was named one of the area’s most anticipated openings of the year, but some of the work Austyn remains proudest of happened beyond the dining room. Through Woodside’s Pay It Forward program, the restaurant helped provide meals to neighbors who needed them and organized winter coat drives for the community. Austyn also worked with euphoria’s Connect for Good initiatives and participated in ReGrow SC, supporting South Carolina farms during an especially difficult period for the hospitality and agricultural industries.
Woodside became an important chapter in Austyn’s life, both professionally and personally. In 2023, he made the decision to step away from the restaurant to focus on his sobriety and, most importantly, his family. It was a turning point that changed more than his career. It gave him a renewed sense of perspective about the kind of chef, husband, father, and person he wanted to be.
The next chapter allowed him to return to cooking with that perspective.
At Curean, Austyn helped open the restaurant and was given the freedom to create a menu that reflected his own voice and experiences. He later joined Larkin’s Catering, where the scale changed considerably. Producing weddings, celebrations, corporate events, and large-format catering strengthened his understanding of organization, leadership, consistency, and hospitality beyond the walls of a traditional restaurant.
Those experiences ultimately prepared him for his current role as Executive Chef of the Greenville Drive at Fluor Field, where his career has come full circle in many ways: cooking for the same community in which he grew up, now on one of Greenville’s largest hospitality stages.
In 2024, Austyn competed on Food Network’s Chopped, cooking through all three rounds and finishing as the episode’s runner-up. It was a milestone in a career that began years earlier in small Upstate kitchens—and a reminder of just how far that teenage restaurant job had taken him.
Today, Austyn continues that journey through AustynCooks, creating private dinners, intimate gatherings, celebrations, and bespoke catered experiences throughout Greenville and the Upstate. His cooking is grounded in bold flavors, thoughtful hospitality, and the belief that memorable food doesn’t need to be complicated—it needs to be intentional.
Away from the kitchen, life revolves around his wife and their four children, with plenty of time spent around Greenville schools, volleyball courts, and soccer fields. Fatherhood has changed the way Austyn thinks about success. The ambition is still there, but it is tempered by experience, perspective, and a greater appreciation for being present.
After more than two decades in kitchens, Austyn still considers himself a student of the craft. The goal isn’t simply to cook better food. It’s to keep becoming a better chef, leader, husband, father, and neighbor—and to build something his family can be proud of.
That, more than any title, restaurant, or television appearance, is what AustynCooks represents.
Bring Austyn to your table.
Plan a private dinner or catered gathering.