Pain D'Avignon Chef Moves on to Fresh Ketch & 586 Bistro

By: Amanda Converse, May 3, 2012

Chef Toby Hill, formerly the Executive Chef at Pain D'avignon's Café-Boulangerie in Hyannis, is moving on to become partner and executive chef of 586 Bistro & Bar and Fresh Ketch, both located on Main Street, Hyannis.

Hill, a graduate of Johnson and Wales University, is partnering with the restaurants' owner, Stephen Roy, to form the HiRo Restaurant Group.

Common in larger cities, restaurant groups have a streamlined approach to creating restaurants with different concepts in order to appeal to a variety of people and tastes. The HiRo Restaurant Group will include 586 Bistro & Bar and Fresh Ketch, and are planning to open more restaurants in the future.

Hill, whose resumé includes posts at The Federalist at the XV Beacon Hotel and the Chatham Bars Inn, was named Edible Cape Cod's 2011 Local Hero Best Chef.

Roy is a Cape Cod native who has been in the restaurant business for over eighteen years. He opened Fresh Ketch in 2005 and 586 Bistro & Bar in 2009. Of the new partnership, he said he is "happy to have someone to bounce ideas off of, someone with Toby's experience and expertise."

According to Roy, both partners share the "same passion, drive and beliefs about the food industry."  Hill says he will continue to buy locally raised and organic food as much as possible, fostering  relationships with local farms such as CapeAbilities Farm, Blue Ribbon Farm, Surrey Farm, Luscious Organics, Cape Cod Organic Farm, Wanna Bee Farm and Not Enough Acres.
 

He will begin cooking at 586 Bistro & Bar full time at the end of May. Although the concept of Fresh Ketch—a seasonal seafood and American restaurant—will remain the same, Hill said he will be upgrading its menu.
 

The menu at 586 Bistro will undergo gradual changes to represent Hill's style of cooking and will undergo an entire concept change in the beginning of 2013. But one thing that will remain the same is the restaurant's popular wood-fired pizza.

 

"Those ovens are so unique," says Hill, "that we will always use it for pizza and whatever else I can cook in there."