Sunshine Food

Dear Bill,

My mom and I traveled to Sydney in May of 2018. Neither of us had ever been before. We flew eight hours to Vancouver, 15 hours and 35 minutes to Sydney, then took a taxi to our airbnb in Surry Hills. I chose to stay there because it was close to a Bills location. I knew we’d be arriving in the morning, we’d be upside down, we’d want bed but we’d need breakfast. So we put down our suitcases, splashed our faces, and walked up the hill for breakfast at Bills. Ricotta pancakes dusted with icing sugar for me, a fried egg on mushroom fried rice for my mom. 

I met you through your cookbook, Sydney Food, while working at a cookbook store when I first moved to London. I was used to dark winter nights, but the London latitude - just six degrees further north than where I was from, created an early darkness that surprised me. Outside the Portobello Road market vendors were cloaked in the white glow of the street lights. Inside we were straightening the spines of the cookbooks, enjoying the quiet of the end of day, talking about what we were going to eat for dinner that night. Lorraine was up on a ladder in red converse sneakers, pulling stock from the top shelf as her white taffeta skirt dripped down the steps. She was planning on her usual - linguine with chilli and garlic, a favourite from her days working at Alastair Little’s. Ali had worked for Claire Macdonald in Scotland and was comfortable sliding a roast into the oven on a weeknight. Meanwhile, I was stuck in Sydney Food, your first cookbook. I had never been to Sydney, but there it was, beaming through the pages like a shimmering pop-up book - green papaya salad with grilled beef, plump prawns studded through pasta spiked with arugula, gravlax topped with ribbons of cucumber, coconut bread dusted with icing sugar, and my favourite - fluffy ricotta pancakes layered with honeycombed butter and bananas. Bright, happy food shining through the pages on a dark day in London. 

In the introduction of the book you share that your first restaurant in Sydney had council restrictions limiting seating to 35 people, and shortened opening hours to protect the quiet of the neighbourhood. So you set about offering the best daytime food possible, served around a big open table to fill the space ‘in an inviting way.’ That was 1993. You were in your twenties, an art student, and already the kind of guy who thrived on creative constraints. Since then you’ve opened many restaurants around the world. Your food wasn’t pushing boundaries, it was a feeling you were looking for, one of communal comfort in the bustle of a big city. 

We met in person a year after I started working at the cookbook store. You were teaching an evening cooking class above the shop to a room full of Australian expats … and me. It was dark outside, but you were full of Sydney sunshine. I remember blue jeans, chili prawns, finely sliced shallots, a spicy broth, and your smiling self telling stories of meals shared around a communal table. 

This afternoon I lit a candle in my grey, January kitchen. I whisked ricotta with milk and egg yolks. I sifted flour, I whipped whites until they were stiff, and folded everything together with a metal spoon, just like you advise. I had a lemon, so I zested it over the yellow batter. It was sunshine in a bowl. I melted butter, spooned the batter into the hot pan, and cooked the pancakes until little bubbles appeared, then popped. I’ve been saving a jar of pears in the cupboard, put up by my friend last summer. This was their moment.

It’s a feeling, these ricotta pancakes. And that’s what I think of when I think of you - sunshine and breakfast. 

x Lindsay

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* You can find Bill’s incredibly light ricotta pancakes over here.