When Bill Granger opened his first cafe in Japan in 2008, he flew his entire Japanese senior team to Sydney. Driving them around in a little van, he tried to explain what bills was about, and where it had come from.

The experience made him realise, he said, that Australian food is not just something formed by our cultural mix and migration patterns, but is more of an attitude. “And it isn’t stuck,” he said. “It changes. That’s the magic.”

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The irony is that as soon as anyone takes their first bite of Bill Granger’s avocado on toast, silky scrambled eggs or ricotta hotcakes, they’re not going to let them change at all.

Whether your first bills experience was at the original corner cottage in Darlinghurst, or at any one of the other 18 restaurants across Sydney, London, Korea and Japan that he built with his wife Natalie, we wanted what he was cooking.

Bill Granger was Australia’s sunniest culinary ambassador, feeding his vision of Australian home cooking to the world. He wrote 14 cookbooks, made five television series and was honoured with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in January 2023. He died in December, 2023.

Veteran chef and restaurateur Neil Perry remembers walking into bills in Darlinghurst in the early 1990s. “It was always just about the beautiful, simple things that Bill did really, really well,” he says. “There was a simplicity to it, but also sophistication. He always made sure that sunny Australian nature came through.”

Award-winning chef Kylie Kwong opened Billy Kwong in Surry Hills with Granger in the year 2000, helping inspire her uniquely Chinese-Australian culinary path. “We had this instant creative connection that I’d never had with anyone before,” says Kwong of their time together. “He taught me so much.”

“There was a simplicity to it, but also sophistication. He always made sure that sunny Australian nature came through.”

Neil Perry

Bill’s influence goes beyond the fact that his fresh-faced dishes and large communal table have been copied across the world. He had a way of defining who we are as Australians, or who we wanted to be: sunny, fresh, easy-going, generous, design-conscious, food-loving people who like to gather around a big table to eat, drink and commune. He packaged us up, put us on toast, and spread us around the world.

The Vittoria Coffee Legend Award is one of the most enduring awards in Australian hospitality, honouring the great and the good since 2003. It’s fitting that in the same year Bill Granger is announced as the 2025 Legend, The Good Food Guide launches a new award, in partnership with his family.

Named The Bill Granger Trailblazer, it’s in honour of Bill’s hospitality, warmth, integrity and free-spirited entrepreneurial attitude. May the winners now and into the future create and craft new expressions of hospitality that move us forward as Australians, and pay their respects to his legacy.

Thanks, Bill. You’re a legend.

The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2025, featuring more than 450 reviews, is on sale for $14.95 from newsagents, supermarkets and at thestore.com.au.

The new Good Food app is now available to download, featuring Good Food Guide reviews, recipes and food news. It’s available as a standalone subscription and as part of Nine’s Premium Digital packages for subscribers of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Premium Digital subscribers can download the Good Food app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store now.