Longtime Upstate restaurant group to open third location in Mauldin.

Longtime regional restaurant group Stella's is making its way to the under-construction mixed-use development BridgeWay Station in Mauldin.

Hughes Investments Inc. announced the new concept by Stella's Restaurant Group on Thursday.

Owners Julia and Jason Scholz opened Stella's Southern Bistro in 2008 in Simpsonville and their second restaurant, Stella's Southern Brasserie, Parkside Provisions, and Caf, in the Hollingsworth Park Verdae neighborhood off Woodruff Road in Greenville in 2017.

Their BridgeWay Station location will be the third restaurant venture for the Scholzs, and first new venture with Chef Anthony Gray, their longtime associate and culinary director who became partner of Stella's Brasserie in 2020. The space will occupy approximately 3,000 square feet of ground floor retail space on BridgeWay's Main Street, according to a Hughes Investments news release.

This new venture will honor the Scholzs' established, longtime commitment and mission in sourcing products locally and regionally first, and always striving to support the community that supports them, the release said.

Julia Scholz has managed a wide variety of restaurants for many years, and met her husband and business partner, Jason Scholz, in Charleston, where he was an executive chef at High Cotton. Together, they moved to Greenville and opened Stella's Bistro, "the product of Julia's imagination and Jason's passion and revered precision in the kitchen," according to the release.

"Jason and I, along with Chef Gray, are looking forward to expanding the Stella's family of restaurants to this area of town with the unique opportunity of being a part of Bridgeway Station," said Julia Scholz said in the release. "The third restaurant in our group will be nestled right between our Greenville and Simpsonville locations. This area is where we personally call home, and we recognize how much capacity there still is for locally owned, high-quality restaurants and retail to serve the growing Mauldin, Simpsonville, and Five Forks area."

Gray, who has more than 13 years of culinary experience, appeared on Bravo's "Top Chef" television show, earning the title, "Atlanta Rising Star Chef" after opening Southern Art and Bourbon Bar in Atlanta with Chef Art Smith in 2011 and after opening Bacon Bros. Public House in Greenville in 2013. Since Gray joined the Scholzs' in 2020 to lead the kitchen at Stella's Southern Brasserie, he currently oversees Stella's Southern Bistro, Stella's Southern...