Bill Granger was the first to put avocado on toast on a café menu — he defined modern Australian food before he died, writes Michael Cohen.
I LIVE NEAR a Bill’s restaurant. I eat there. I like it. The food doesn’t swagger or show off. It arrives clean, bright, and generous — the kind of breakfast you could introduce to your mother. And every time I sit down to those reliably perfect scrambled eggs or that familiar plate of avocado toast, I feel a quiet sense of continuity with the Sydney I know.
I first ate at the original Bill’s in Darlinghurst in the ’90s, when the café scene was still earnest and unsure of itself. Breakfast back then was practical, predictable, a little beige. Bill Granger had a different vision. He believed breakfast could be simple but joyful, humble but luminous. He opened spaces filled with soft light and an uncomplicated sense of welcome, where food didn’t need to be explained to be good.
And of course, it was Bill who first put avocado on toast on a café menu in 1990. The idea seems obvious now — too obvious — but that’s only because he did it first. At the time, it felt new in a way that didn’t call attention to itself. He didn’t chase trends or announce a movement. He just served something that felt right, and the rest of the world quietly rearranged itself around the idea.
His influence worked like that: gentle, generous, steady. Bill never performed the tortured-chef persona or hid behind culinary theatrics. He offered honesty, decency, and food that wanted to make your morning better rather than impress you with its ambition. His work shaped the way we eat in Australia far more deeply than most people realise.
And then he died — in 2023, of cancer, at just 54.
The unfairness of that sits heavily every time I think of it. He wasn’t someone whose story felt close to ending. He was still creating, still teaching, still feeding people in that quietly luminous way of his. And crucially – because this matters – he wasn’t a chaotic figure or a self-destructive genius type. There was no drama. He was simply a married man, a devoted father, a kind person doing decent work. Yet, in the universe’s familiar indifference, he was taken anyway.
His death also lands strangely against the backdrop of the time we’re living in. I’m part of a generation newly aware that death itself might one day be cured. ChatGPT suggests that within a few generations humans may defeat ageing altogether. We occupy a razor-thin moment in history: infinite generations before us never imagined such a possibility, and infinite after us may simply inherit it.
But we are the first to look at death and glimpse a world without it.
Bill belonged to that same small generation — aware of the possibility of immortality, yet born just early enough to miss it. He made his contribution, a lasting one, and then was taken before he could see how long the world will remember him. In another era, he might have lived forever. Instead, his life ended in the middle of its meaning.
I still eat at Bill’s near my home. I think about what Australian food culture would look like without him, how grey our breakfasts might still be. One decent man shifted the national palate not by swagger but by sincerity. Many of us have started our days feeling a little more human because of something he created.
His food was never my absolute favourite — and somehow that makes its honesty stand out even more. It was healthy, fair-priced, unpretentious, and quietly Australian in the best sense. I feel grateful not just for the meals, but for the man who made simplicity taste like clarity.
Rest in peace, Bill. If there is a place where time finally shows mercy, I hope you’re there.
Michael Cohen is a Sydney-based Jewish Australian writer who previously contributed extensively to international newspapers, offering both articles and conceptual material. He now focuses on human rights issues.
