Madison LeCroy is giving Craig Conover and Austen Kroll their flowers.
After celebrating her son Hudson’s latest school achievement, the Southern Charm cast member treated her 12-year-old boy to a special date night in downtown Charleston. Madison documented the outing in a couple of Instagram Stories, revealing she and Hudson spent part of their evening at By the Way, a newly opened restaurant co-owned by Craig and Austen.
Madison and her son, Hudson, show support for Austen and Craig
One of the photos showed the mother and son posing together while sitting at a booth. Madison captioned the photo with a short but positive review of the eatery: “Good job boys!” she wrote.
Austen reshared the post on his Instagram in which he thanked Madison for the support.
“Thanks for stopping by you guys,” he wrote.
What does Craig and Austen's new eatery have to offer?
Austen and Craig opened By the Way in mid-December, nearly a year after they announced the exciting business move. The Southern Charm-ers, who are also investors in the New York City restaurant Carriage House — shed more light on their new chapter in an exclusive interview with The Daily Dish.
“It’s always been a dream of ours to open up something in Charleston,” Austen said before the restaurant's grand opening. “What could be more fun than to open up something like this with one of your best friends?”
The By the Way interior was designed by Brooklyn-based firm Home Studios while the menu was created by Executive Chef Marcus Shell. Food items include a tomato jam burger, a duck confit sandwich, a stuffed Caesar salad, fried oysters and caviar, Fox Den wings, and a brown butter crab crostini.
"The goal is so if you're here and you decide you're having such a good time that you decide to skip dinner, there is plenty on the menu for you to have a good meal, a great meal," Austen said.
Craig Conover shares his vision for By the Way
Craig echoed Austen's comments and said he hoped By the Way would fill a void in the Holy City.
“I wanted to invest more in our backyard,” Craig explained. “You know, Charleston is a great city and there’s so many people visiting here and now that the show’s been on for 12 years, 10 seasons, it will be our way of sharing a little bit more of our lives with people. You know, we send everyone that visits Charleston and all the fans and viewers to everyone else’s bars. Why not give them a space that we would enjoy hanging out at too?”
Craig described Charleston as a "very fun town" with plenty of bars, but many of those establishments were "a little more geared towards partying." He said he wanted to create a space that offered different energy — a place with a more elevated vibe appropriate for family and work-related get-togethers.
"I started to find that, you know, after dinner there wasn’t a place to take your partner or family in town, or like, after a business dinner, there wasn’t anywhere to go except like going straight to a college bar," he explained. "There’s not really options if you wanted to go somewhere and your body to still move from the music, but you can hear each other talk. So we we basically built a bar because there wasn’t a place like this in Charleston to go hang out.”
Craig and Austen opened By the Way in partnership with Uptown Hospitality Group. You can learn more about the restaurant at its website.
