Decision details

Moved by Councillor Worling, seconded by the Chair (the Lord Mayor) -

It is resolved that:

(A)      Council note:

(i)         Australian restaurateur, cook and food writer Bill Granger was born in Melbourne, Victoria on 29 August 1969; the son of William and Patricia;

(ii)        Granger was educated at Mentone Grammar and Beaconhills College in Melbourne, before commencing Interior Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He gave this up to move to Sydney in the 1990s;

(iii)      in Sydney, Granger studied fine art at COFA (the College of Fine Art at the University of New South Wales);

(iv)      Granger was a self-taught cook. While working as a waiter at a cafe called La Passion du Fruit, in Surry Hills, he gained more of an interest in food and started renting the space from the owner to do his own dinner service, three times a week. As the café only had a “tearoom” licence (and did not have a stove or oven), Granger prepped everything at home and assembled it at the café using only a kettle and a grill;

(v)       in 1992, at 23 years old, he left this job to set up his own place, bills, on Liverpool Street in Darlinghurst. The café was utterly original in its approach to casual dining – with a large communal table, a strong design sensibility, and reliance on fresh produce from the get-go. It was also one of Sydney’s first cafes to be non-smoking, which was well ahead-of-its-time. This seminal café remains open to this day and has become a blueprint for the Australian café worldwide;

(vi)      Granger met his wife and business partner Natalie Elliott in the 1990s and they were married in 2006. Granger and Elliott’s daughters, Edie, Inès and Bunny were born in 2000, 2002 and 2004 respectively;

(vii)     Granger found widespread fame via a plethora of cookbooks including, in 2000, the hugely successful Bill’s Sydney Food, which proved a culinary bible for home cooks interested in replicating Granger’s no-fuss, flavour-forward dishes;

(viii)    in 2008, Granger and Elliott saw an opportunity to take his casual, quintessentially Australian dining-style to the world, opening bills in Japan, followed by Granger & Co in London in 2011 (someone had taken the name bills), and then South Korea. In 2018, The New Yorker credited him as the “restaurateur most responsible for the Australian café’s global reach”;

(ix)      from 2011 until 2014, Granger was a regular food columnist for the UK’s Independent on Sunday. Over the years he made numerous appearances on radio and television including a regular weekly appearance on Lorraine (ITV UK) and his own six TV series: Bill’s Food (2004, 2006), Bill’s Holiday (2009), Bill’s Tasty Weekends (2010) and Bill’s Kitchen: Notting Hill (2013). The programs have been screened in over 30 countries;

(x)       on Australia Day, 26 January 2023, Granger was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to “Tourism and Hospitality;”

(xi)      on Christmas Day in 2023, at 54, Granger died in a London hospital. He is survived by his wife, Natalie, their three daughters, Edie, Inès and Bunny, and his brother Steven;

(xii)     at the time of his death, Granger had numerous cafes in Sydney, in Darlinghurst, Bondi, Surry Hills and Double Bay, five Granger & Co operations in London, from Notting Hill to Chelsea, eight restaurants in Japan and two in South Korea. He had published 14 cookbooks, which between them sold more than a million copies; and

(xiii)    along with his noted avocado toast, scrambled eggs and ricotta hotcakes with banana and honeycomb butter, Granger will be remembered for his originality, sunny smile, and joyful and unpretentious attitude to hospitality. Granger made it his life mission to serve good food in beautiful environments, and make people feel good while doing it. He will be sorely missed;

(B)      all present in the meeting take one minute of silence to honour the memory of the remarkable Bill Granger; and,

(C)      the Lord Mayor be requested to write to Bill Granger’s family expressing the Council's sincere condolences on his passing.

Carried unanimously.

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Note – All Councillors, staff and members of the public present stood in silence for one minute as a mark of respect to Bill Granger.