Bill Granger, 54; chef brought avocado toast to the world
Bill Granger, a chef who combined an easy Australian manner with a talent for making simple food sing, selling the world on the infinite potential of breakfast, died on Christmas Day in London. He was 54.
His death, in a hospital, was announced on his Instagram page. Cause was not specified.
To many Australians, and particularly Sydneysiders, Mr. Granger was just Bill: the frontman, originator, and head chef of a Sydney corner cafe called Bills that eventually expanded to nine outlets across three countries, as well as an offshoot, Granger & Co., with five locations in London.
His facility for food that was straightforward yet stunning propelled him onto television screens — his “Bill’s Food” and “Bill’s Holiday” were both on the air for multiple seasons — and bookshelves, making him a national treasure.
Although he wrote about a dozen books that included more than 500 recipes, he became best known for two dishes in particular: a zesty avocado on toast, which his cafe is often credited with being the first to serve, and scrambled eggs with luxuriously creamy curds.
The avocado toast, sold at Bills for 18 Australian dollars a plate (about $12), would take on a life of its own, becoming an international food trend and held up as an example of millennial frivolity and excess that was preventing a generation from becoming homeowners.
In many respects, said Jane Morrow, his publisher at Murdoch Books, Mr. Granger exemplified the best of his country’s national attitude: warm, open generous, with an understated commitment to excellence.
“He reflected that back to Australians themselves,” she said, “and then he sold that to the world — and that gave us, as Australians, confidence.”
William Granger was born in Mentone, a Melbourne suburb, on Aug. 26, 1969, to — as he liked to note — a butcher and a vegetarian. His father was one in a line of Williams (and butchers), and his mother, Patricia, worked in the fashion industry.
Mr. Granger had an early interest in food, bringing his parents a “silver service” of breakfast in bed from the age of 5 and working his way through magazine recipe cards, before turning his attention to food writers Elizabeth David and Margaret Fulton. He feasted on Melbourne’s richly diverse cuisine, eating dim sum with the Chinese parents of a childhood friend and searching out Lebanese kofta, African curry, and the “most pungent” Parmesan, he wrote in his most recent cookbook, “Australian Food” (2020).
Like his father, he went to Mentone Grammar School, a private boys school at the time. In high school, he by turns struggled and excelled — he took three attempts to graduate but scored top marks in art. He then spent a few months studying architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Finding the field too “rigid,” he told the podcast “Grilling” in 2021, he dropped out and moved to Sydney, where he attended art school. These studies, too, would ultimately be shortlived, but travels in Japan, stints waiting tables, and work in kitchens eventually inspired him to open his own place, Bills.
“I had no formal training as a chef, and I’ve always said that, ironically, this was a great training,” Mr. Granger wrote in “Australian Food.” “I wasn’t tied down by any rules about food and fine dining. I didn’t even know the rules I wasn’t supposed to be breaking. It puts me on a parallel with the Australian way of eating: joyfully lacking in fixed assumptions or strict culinary history.”
It was at Bills that the real business of breakfast began. Finding few proprietors prepared to rent a site to a 22-yearold with no commercial experience (and just 30,000 Australian dollars, borrowed against his grandfather’s insurance policy), he settled on a site with a few dozen seats, no liquor license, and a compulsory closing time of around 3 p.m., and set about transforming it into the communal dining setting of his dreams.
“As an ex-art student, I had a bit of a feel for design,” he wrote. “I liked minimalism, and it was cheap. So was breakfast.”
Bills brought together Mr. Granger’s talents for unfussy, fresh fare; his Melburnian fondness for artisanal, espressobased coffee; his taste for sophisticated international flavors; and his eye for breezy, beachy beauty, at a time when people were dining out more than ever before.
It would eventually become the blueprint for the modern Australian cafe culture that has been exported worldwide, inspiring the coffee chain Bluestone Lane and the restaurant Sqirl in Los Angeles, among other establishments.
Mr. Granger met Natalie Elliott in the late 1990s at his cafe in Darlinghurst, a suburb of Sydney. Within weeks, they had purchased a ring and planned their nuptials, he told an Australian newspaper in 2002, although they did not marry until 2006, after having three daughters.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Granger is survived by his daughters, Edie, Bunny, and Inès Elliott Granger, and his brother, Steven. He had lived in London for 14 years with his family.