Bill Granger, the chef who brought avocado toast to the world, dies at 54

Mr. Granger took an early interest in food, treating his parents to a “silver serve” of breakfast in bed from the age of 5 and perusing magazine recipe cards, before turning his attention to food writers Elizabeth David and Margaret Fulton. He feasted on Melbourne’s rich and diverse cuisine, eating dim sum with a childhood friend’s Chinese parents and seeking out the Lebanese kofta, African curry and “the hottest” parmesan, he said. -he writes 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 alternately struggled and excelled – he attempted to graduate three times, but got top marks in art. He then spent a few months studying architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

Finding the terrain too “rigid”, he said the “Grilling” podcast in 2021, he abandoned his studies and moved to Sydney, where he attended art school. These studies, too, were ultimately short-lived, but the trips to Japan, periods of table service and kitchen work ultimately inspired him to open his own restaurant, Bills.

“I had no formal training as a chef and I always said that, ironically, it was excellent training,” Mr Granger wrote in “Australian Food”. “I was not bound by any rules regarding food and gastronomy. I didn’t even know the rules I wasn’t supposed to break. This parallels me with the Australian way of eating: happily devoid of fixed assumptions or strict culinary history.

It was at Bills that the real breakfast business began. Finding few landlords willing to rent any site to a 22-year-old with no business experience (and with only A$30,000 borrowed from his grandfather’s insurance policy), he settled on a site with a few dozen seats, without an alcohol license and a mandatory closing around 3 p.m. and set about transforming it into the collective catering venue of your dreams.