William D'Auvray

Executive Chef/Partner

D'Auvray's distinguished career is steeped in French cuisine and honed with Japanese technique. It spans decades of training under culinary legends from Southern California, France, and D.C. — including Michel Richard, Jean-Francois Meteigner, Joachim Splichal, Wolfgang Puck, and Hidemasa Yamamoto. 

His formal education includes an apprenticeship at Scandia in Los Angeles when he was only 15, staging across France for weeks at a time in bistros and Michelin-starred restaurants, and a decade with French-trained Japanese chefs, where he mastered the art of applying classic French and Japanese techniques to seasonal and global ingredients. 

D’Auvray is highly regarded for his mastery of seafood and best known for his innovative California-Asian cuisine. His personal style blends French and Japanese techniques with global influence and ingredients to create distinct dishes shaped by his life and culinary training.

D’Auvray — who spent his childhood in the Philippines and grew up in Beverly Hills — was raised on the French classics at home with his French-born father. An early appreciation for this cuisine made Michel Richard's Pâtisseries in Beverly Hills and Hollywood Hills a natural place for D’Auvray to begin in the kitchen. 

By the time he was 20, D’Auvray was fortunate to have spent four years under Japanese chefs at the storied La Petite Chaya and Chaya Brasserie  in Los Angeles at the very moment they were pioneering “Cali-Asian” cuisine in the US — an innovative globally-inspired cuisine that would set the tone for his own personal style and esteemed culinary career. When he worked under the renowned Chef Patrick Healy at Colette in West Hollywood, D’Auvray was encouraged to travel to France to learn about ingredients and techniques. 

After his time in France, he continued working at Colette while taking roles at the legendary L’Orangerie under Jean Francois Meteigner and other California kitchens like Ma Maison and Max au Triangle under a young Wolfgang Puck and Joachim Splichal. 

With a keen interest in seafood, D’Auvray spent the next years working with Japanese seafood masters Hidemasa Yamamoto and Fujimoto Fukui. When they moved from L.A. to take over the legendary Jockey Club at the Ritz Carlton in Washington, D.C., D’Auvray joined them. His expertise in seafood was honed during these years, culminating in his leadership at the famous Jockey Club and cooking for two presidents and their cabinet members.

Family ties brought D’Auvray to North Carolina, and in 1997, D’Auvray introduced his global seafood cuisine to Raleigh with the opening of his first restaurant, Fins, which earned a 4/4-star review in The News & Observer and garnered national attention by Bon Appetit as one of the "Best Seafood Restaurants” in the country in 2008.

After 13 wildly successful years, D'Auvray closed Fins to introduce more casual global small plates at bu.ku. Restaurant consulting took D’Auvray to Florida and Maine, and when he returned to North Carolina, he lent his consulting expertise to area restaurants before taking on the role of Executive Chef at East End Bistrot in 2023.

D’Auvray is now the Executive Chef and Managing Partner of East End Bistrot, which repeatedly earns recognition as “Best New Restaurant,” “Restaurant of the Year,” and “Best Restaurant” by Eater Carolinas, News Observer, Raleigh Magazine, Axios, and Infatuation.