Sunny side up

Sydney cafe guru Bill Granger has confirmed the location of his newest Sydney venue. It will open on Cross St, Double Bay, this winter. The new cafe — the fourth Bills in Sydney — will be located in the soon-to-open The Hunter development, across from the Intercontinental Hotel.

Granger confirmed the opening in an interview with Local Bayside.

“I am thrilled about it,” he says. “Double Bay is amazing. It has been neglected for so long but things are changing. It’s a great spot going back a long way. After the war, it became so popular with all the Eastern Europeans and it still has those generations there. It’s just great and I’m so excited about it.”

The fit out will be done by Jules Meacham, of Meacham Nockles, long-time collaborators of Granger’s, with the promise of the venue having a different look and feel to the other Bills venues dotted around Sydney. 

“We’re also playing around with the menu a bit for Double Bay,” Granger says. “Double Bay has a bit more of a grown-up feel so we will create a menu to reflect that.”

Expect the venue to open all day for breakfast, lunch and dinner services.

The Bayside Bills will be the group’s fourth cafe after other venues in Darlinghurst, Bondi and Surry Hills. Granger also has an international cafe empire that includes four cafes in London, four in Japan and one in Seoul, South Korea.

Granger has spent the past year in London after being locked out of Australia due to COVID, but is eagerly awaiting a return to home shores. He says the COVID period has been a worrying time for his venues, but the Australian properties have bounced back quickly after the shutdowns of 2020. 

In fact, they bounced back so quickly that plans in late 2020 to sell off the site of the original Bills cafe, on Liverpool St, Darlinghurst, were shelved, and the venue has reopened for trading.

“We’re going great again, which is fantastic,” Granger says. “It was such a worrying time, but things changed quickly.”

An exact date for the Double Bay opening is yet to be set but it is expected to be within two months.

bills.com.au