V Rating: VV
Where: 359 Crown Street, Surry Hills
When: Dinner: 7 days, 7 am - 10.00pm.
Tel: (02) 9360 4762
Price: Breakfast: $6 - $16.80 Lunch: $12.50 - $24.50.

Bill Granger is the celebrity chef du jour in Sydney. He writes a weekly column in the Sydney Morning Herald, hosts a cooking show on pay TV, and publishes copious cookbooks filled with impossibly bright, light, airy photos and casually brilliant recipes.

Oh, and he runs a few restaurants as well.

So, when a good friend of mine came to Sydney on the weekend I promised to take him to a special lunch spot - bills Surry Hills (formerly bills 2).

Unfortunately, we arrived at 11.30am. Lunch didn’t start until 12.00pm. As a line was already starting to form for tables we didn’t like our chances of coming back in half an hour - so we had breakfast instead.

I ordered the ricotta hot cakes with banana and honeycomb butter because every review I’ve read about bills make mention of them.

The hotcakes were thick, light and fluffy. The fairly meager slices of banana (bloody cyclone) were tucked cosily underneath the hotcakes. The slices of butter on top of the hot cakes looked surprisingly like slices of banana - making for a not so pleasant first mouthful. The hotcakes were good - don’t get me wrong. But not as good as the reams of glowing reviews suggested.

Andy and our friend had the good sense to order sweet corn fritter, with tomato and spinach. On the menu it comes with bacon, but they had it with mushrooms instead.

The truly amazing thing about these babies was the succulent, whole pieces of corn. Even though the cakes were fried, the corn still retained a strong, fresh, sweet taste. And yes, I had food envy the whole meal.

The thing about bills was that if it were a cafe I’d wandered into from the street I probably would have thought it was an amazing find. But because Bill Granger has such a mythic status in Sydney, by the time I tried it out it didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

The cafe is stylish and funky. The food was clearly made with high quality, fresh ingredients. There are some good vegetarian options on the menu… but maybe next time I’ll wait until 12pm and try lunch.

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