Bill of fare

His simple recipes reflect and have helped shape the way we eat
today, but Bill Granger says he's more interested in living than
cooking.

They say the best way to prepare for an interview with a chef is to spend a few days following his recipes. It's an appealing theory, conceivably based on the notion that part-way through the task of slicing carrots, grating ginger, grinding cumin and stealing lemons off the tree in your neighbour's backyard, you'll develop an affinity for the person who conjured the dish. Or, at the very least, glean precious insight into an individual's approach to food.

In the case of Bill Granger, however, there seems only one recipe to turn to. Comprising four ingredients (two eggs, a third of a cup of cream, a pinch of salt and a tablespoon of butter), it was, some time in the mid-'90s, considered sufficiently masterful to leave Nicole Kidman gushing on Oprah's couch and have its creator crowned the "egg master of Sydney" by The New York Times.

Back then, the tale of a fresh-faced 22-year-old, who quit art school to open his first restaurant in Darlinghurst in 1993, proved just as tantalising as his hotcake recipes. The television series that followed, bills food, captured an affable, blond fellow who splashed around in the sparkling waters of Bondi each morning before delighting his photogenic offspring with communal cooking escapades, all set to a marvellously breezy mid-summer soundtrack. Bare feet, straw hats, crisp white T-shirts, pearly whites and strolls along the sand, the show seduced audiences in 20-odd countries with both its recipes and its idyllic depiction of life in Sydney's harbourside suburbs.

Everyone, it seems, wanted a piece of the Granger cake. Some 16 years, three children, seven cookbooks, four restaurants and another television series later, they still do.

To dine at the latest incarnation of bills cafe, which opened just south of Tokyo in March last year, devotees reportedly have to queue for up to four hours. The drawcard, should you need to ask, remains scrambled eggs.

Not that Granger doesn't cook other things. He does. It's just that people know him as the brunch guy, which is a quaint turn for a bloke whose fondest childhood memories of food stem from roadside motel breakfasts in country Victoria. "My idea of glamour was when you got the tray through the door, the little hatch, I thought that was the most exciting thing when I was a kid," he says. "You know, you got the little pack of Rice Bubbles or, if you were lucky, you got the Cocoa Pops."

Remind Granger that the toast was invariably cold and a tad soggy and he'll give a laugh. "I think it's the idea of it rather than the reality".

Impressions and ideas of food - people's memories of meals and the emotional ties that bind us to certain dishes - are as integral to Granger's style as his recipes. What sets bills food apart from other cooking shows, he says, is the way it weaves food into a larger tapestry of lifestyle and family. "I call it the Home and Away of Food, but we get so many emails from strange places, like Belgium and Brazil, and I think the reason people love it is because it embraces food in the context of the Australian lifestyle."

On a personal level, Granger says he looks back over his own cookbooks as he might a family photo album or diary. "Recipes serve as real markers to your life," he says.

Referring to a recipe for a rhubarb and strawberry breakfast crisp that appears in his latest title, Feed Me Now!, Granger recalls the first time he baked it. "It was a frosty morning. I'd been travelling, the girls didn't want to go out and I just put it together and served it with some yoghurt. Every time I cook that recipe I remember that morning."

That vignette neatly encapsulates his approach to cooking: the best meals are just as much about the food on the plate as the company you enjoy them in. And, if you keep the recipe simple, there's more time to spend on other things, like being relaxed and enjoying every mouthful.

Sentiment aside, Granger believes his recipes also map shifts in the Australian culinary landscape. "I grew up going to Pellegrini's and Leo's spaghetti bar (in St Kilda), so my early books reflected that. Then we had the Thai wave and the Chinese wave when everyone wanted to do a cooking course at the local Chinese restaurant.

"I like my books to reflect what's going on in the larger world of food, so when I eat an amazing dish at a restaurant my first thought is always, 'How do I make a simple home version of that?' "

Granger says it's not just what we eat but how we eat that's changed radically in the past 20 years. "It's hard to believe now but back in the early '90s the whole idea of the modern cafe didn't exist. When bills first opened, there were a couple of places for coffee, but if you wanted to eat at decent restaurants you had to travel into the city to find them. Now, with so many great neighbourhood restaurants, it's the other way around."

As for defining the Australian palate, Granger believes it's only now that many local chefs are beginning to embrace a genuine antipodean style.

"There was a real cultural cringe in the '90s with the idea that cooking had to be European to be good. When I was growing up in Melbourne there was always something called the Paris end of Collins Street and I would always wonder why. I mean, why can't it simply be the Melbourne end of Collins Street?"

Bill Granger appears at an Age/Dymocks literary lunch at Zinc, Federation Square, from noon today. He will also attend book signings at Readings Hawthorn at 6.30 tonight and Dymocks Doncaster, Westfield Shoppingtown, at noon tomorrow.

BILL GRANGER ON …

His children: "I do feel sorry for them sometimes. Other kids get to go to Disneyland but they get dragged to Italy to go truffle hunting. I have these great photos of them with handfuls of dirt and truffles with these really bored looks on their faces. Poor things."

Dinner at el Bulli: "The most sophisticated people in the world eat the simplest. That's not to say molecular gastronomy isn't amazing, it's just that it's not the kind of food you'd want to eat everyday. Plus there are only three people in the world you'd want to cook it for you."

Why Japan has the best food in the world: "It's all about texture and artistry. When you're in Tokyo you can go to restaurants that are 300 years old and have the most amazing tempura. There aren't many places in the world where there's such a depth of history and tradition. Plus the chocolate is incredible."