When Bill Granger passed away on Christmas Day last year, the cook and food writer’s legacy spanned 19 restaurants worldwide, 14 cookbooks and five television series aired in 30 countries. In 2015, The New York Times called him a “Culinary Wizard of Oz”, and posthumously, the man who sold the “infinite potential of breakfast” to the world.
None of it would have been possible without his wife and business partner Natalie Elliott, who first met Granger at the original Bills in Darlinghurst in the late ’90s and helped steer his career until his death, at the age of 54, at his home in London.
Almost a year on, Elliott is thinking about what’s next for the empire she built with Granger. But mainly, she’s thinking about a person she hasn't met yet.
Elliott is hiring for a new role that will shape the future of Bills, and in some ways, fill the role Granger played for decades. The job – which is being called Global Development Chef – would see someone create and develop menus at Bills restaurants in Sydney, Seoul, and across Japan, plus five Granger and Co restaurants in the UK.
“There aren’t many jobs around like it, and not many businesses like ours globally,” Elliott says via phone from Beijing, where one of her daughters is studying. “I’m really proud of the fact we operate in the countries we do, which have such varied and exciting food scenes. That’s a huge part of this role. We want them to really tap into that and enjoy it.”
For the right person, it's a dream job – one that includes international travel and carte blanche to innovate across all culinary aspects of the business. They’d also work closely with Elliott and her core management team to ramp up sustainability practices and eventually open more sites. While they’d ideally be based in Sydney or London, the business is open to sponsoring international applicants to work from either city.
“We have the immense legacy of my husband and massive access to our archives. We want that to be a springboard for whatever that person does, but we don’t want it to limit what they do.”
A one-of-a-kind gig comes with some unique challenges. Comparable roles (culinary directors, executive chefs) typically oversee a handful of venues and plan for the seasons of one hemisphere. Granger’s empire spans four countries in two hemispheres, and feeds around 2.5 million people a year.
“They would have the prowess of solid operating teams in four countries to lean on. Our team in Japan has been working with us for 15 years, and the executive chef there runs eight restaurants,” says Elliott. “They’d get to travel at least twice a year, and be inspired by those countries and those teams.”
There’s no small amount of irony in hiring an experienced chef to take up the mantle of a famously self-taught one. But Granger’s flair for turning uber-fresh ingredients into dishes that were rustic, borderless and beautifully presented came out of necessity rather than a lack of training.
“At the original Bills [in Darlinghurst] there was no room in the fridges. So he had to get fresh ingredients frequently, daily, because there was no room to store things,” says Elliott.
Granger’s distinctive cooking style informed his most famous dishes, and today, there are diners in Fukuoka, Seoul and London who associate avocado on toast and corn fritters with the idea of Australian cuisine, something Elliott and Granger have been asked to “define time and time again.”
“It’s a constant discussion, but for me, it’s about our immigration patterns. Our roots tend to be southern Mediterranean and Asia, that makes sense for the places we’ve been working in. But there’s room for other places to be explored,” she says. “We’re looking for someone who understands what Australian food is and could be.”
