Mr. Granger became interested in food from an early age, bringing his parents a “silver service” of breakfast in bed from the age of five and working his way through magazine recipe cards before turning his attention to food writers Elizabeth David and Margaret Fulton . He enjoyed Melbourne's diverse cuisine, eating dim sum with a childhood friend's Chinese parents and seeking out Lebanese kofta, African curry and the “spiciest” parmesan, he wrote in his latest cookbook, Australian Food (2020). .
Like his father, he attended Mentone Grammar School, then a private boys' school. In high school he alternated between struggling and excelling – he took three tries to graduate but earned top grades in art. He then studied architecture for a few months at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
He found the field too “rigid,” he said on the “Grilling” podcast in 2021, dropped out of his studies and moved to Sydney, where he attended art school. This course of study was ultimately short-lived, but travels in Japan, stints as a waiter and working in the kitchen eventually inspired him to open his own business, Bills.
“I had no formal training as a chef and have always said that, ironically, it was great training,” Mr Granger wrote in Australian Food. “I wasn’t bound by any rules about food and good food. I didn't even know the rules I wasn't supposed to break. It brings me to a parallel with the Australian way of eating: joyful without fixed assumptions or strict culinary history.”
The real breakfast business began at Bills. Finding few owners willing to rent any property to a 22-year-old with no commercial experience (and only $30,000 Australian borrowed from his grandfather's insurance policy), he settled on a property with a few dozen seats, none Liquor license and a He finished the mandatory closing time around 3 p.m. and set about transforming it into the communal dining room of his dreams.