Bill Granger’s restaurant bills were criticized by a top food critic in a brutally honest review weeks after opening in 1993 – before the ‘king of breakfast’ became a culinary icon and had the last laugh

An early review of the late chef Bill Granger’s original cafe in Sydney rated the food as only ‘average’ and made no mention of scrambled eggs or avocado on toast.

Granger, who died of cancer in London on Christmas Day at the age of 54, would eventually gain international fame for his brand of casual dining, but his first venture had modest beginnings.

At the time, Sydney Morning Herald critic Ruth Ritchie awarded both Granger’s food and service a paltry 4 out of 10 and declared its coffee ‘not good enough’.

The self-taught chef opened his eponymous accounts with little fanfare in October 1993 after renting a redecorated old city center hotel at 433 Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst.

There was no sign yet that Granger would become “the king of breakfast” and lead a café revolution, establishing outposts in Tokyo, London and Seoul.

Granger dropped out of college at the age of 22 and started his cooking career at French bistro La Passion du Fruit in Surry Hills before taking a gamble on bills with a $30,000 budget.

Ritchie reviewed the accounts in the Herald on January 4, 1994, weeks after the first coffee and light meals were served.

Some of the features that would make banknotes so popular were there from the beginning, such as the sunlit open spaces and communal dining area.

“The kitchen is open and the room is flooded with sunlight and sparsely furnished with Swedish-style blond wood tables and chairs,” Ritchie wrote.

‘A huge oak table with seating for about fourteen people, where single guests can chat or read, dominates one room.’

Ritchie noted that there were separate menus for two meetings and that the times were strict: breakfast was served from 7:30 a.m. to noon and lunch from noon to 4 p.m.

“The food is not revolutionary,” she wrote, “but there are some surprises: a wake-up call of freshly squeezed orange juice, wheat germ, yogurt and bee pollen; toasted coconut bread, made on site and delicious.’

Ritchie loved the lamb shank with roasted peppers, tapenade and rocket, “only to feel cheated when I saw the steak sandwich with roasted garlic and watercress served to someone else.”

In fact, those options were considered a bargain at the time at $6.50, and desserts cost $3.50.

But Ritchie wasn’t impressed with the Bills’ version of a cafe’s main offering.

“The coffee was standard Darlinghurst fare and was not good enough for the excellent lemon tart,” she wrote.

Overall, Ritchie gave both the food and service a 4/10 – which was ‘average’ on the newspaper’s rating scale – with atmosphere and value rated 7/10.

The review ended on a positive note with a reference to the absence of one of the staples of 1990s café culture.

“Bills is not only a great room, it is a completely focaccia-free zone and for this we give praise and thanks,” Ritchie wrote.

An August 1995 review in the same publication included Bills on a list of Sydney’s top twenty most popular breakfast spots, citing “the queues, the big table, the library of magazines and the overly hip crowd.”

“Wrong,” it continued. “Breakfast at Bill’s is all about one thing: corn fritters… fluffy batter, golden ears and plump peppers, piled with roasted tomatoes, shoehorns of bacon and arugula.”

The coffee had apparently improved and eggs appeared – ‘scrambled eggs only, always perfect’.

A year later the Bills had made it into the Herald’s Good Food Guide and he expanded with a second cafe, Bills2, in Surry Hills.

In 1999, food expert Terry Durack wrote about “the most famous scrambled eggs in the world.”

The New York Times would call Granger the “egg master of Sydney” and he would be credited with making avocado on toast the popular breakfast dish it is today by The Washington Post.

The first reference to proposed legislation in the media appears to have been published in late November 1993 in a piece by Leo Schofield, columnist for the Herald’s Short Black.

Schofield said ex-Ravesis chef Michele Cranston was “rustling up simple food at Bill’s Cafe (Bill is Bill Granger, ex-La Passion du Fruit, ex-art student).”

After Granger’s death from cancer, Cranston recalled those early days of Bills in an Instagram post.

“A few days before we opened the doors of the first notes, we stood at the big table talking about chairs, just like we do here,” she wrote alongside a photo of Granger and herself.

‘A friendly neighbor passed by and saw us standing in an empty cafe wearing our aprons and said, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll come.’ And weren’t those words prophetic?

‘Bill and Bills became synonymous with sunshine, fresh flavours, welcoming spaces, stylish rooms and a friendliness that decades later still radiates from the radiant interiors now spread across the planet.

“Bill exported Australian sunshine and a fresh approach to food to the world and it’s hard to sit here today, on a typically sunny summer day, and not remember the exuberance and fun of those early, busy, crazy days. ‘