Bill Granger divides opinion. He is an Australian chef with a string of restaurants in Sydney and Japan, and has a media presence on TV and in the papers both there and here. You could be very interested in food and have never heard of him, and in culinary terms you wouldn't be missing out on much you didn't already know. On the other hand, his easy manner and general cheerfulness have made him a standard-bearer for the attractive Australian attitude to food. He is a self-taught cook, with a big emphasis on comfort food, baking and making food seem part of an easy, aspirational, Antipodean – sorry, this next word makes my gag reflex kick in – "lifestyle". His cookbooks are excellent, and he is good at looking relaxed while being photographed doing things in kitchens.
I've been to his Sydney restaurant a few times, and thought it wasn't bad, while not quite seeing what the fuss was about. That's the thing that divides opinion: he has fans and also people who just don't get it. Both groups in the UK will now be able to form a view of their own, because Granger has opened his first place here. Granger & Co is at the Notting Hill end of Westbourne Grove, an area that in the last couple of decades has gone from slightly rough to full-on trustafarian to total bankerisation. If you like rich people who have died on the inside pretending to be bohemian during their time off, this is the part of London for you.
Granger's media profile means that even after opening quietly and unheralded, the queue was out the door and down the street when I tried to go for brunch on the very first weekend. Granger & Co is open all day, but they don't take bookings, which adds to the likelihood that you won't get a table without waiting or going at an unpopular time.
Once you get past all that and to a table, you can relax enough to notice that the place is beautifully set up: it feels light and airy and spacious, even though it's really a single big room with a bar on one side and a kitchen at the far end. Granger is a pro, and this feels like a professional operation, though it's one delivering a kind of cooking that most interested amateur cooks will feel they can manage at home. In some cases, they'll be cooking them from Granger's recipes, since he has published versions of his greatest hits, including his famous scrambled eggs (loads of cream added at the end, and miles too rich for me) and his ricotta hot cakes (sensational).
The breakfast, lunch and dinner menus are similar but not identical. I went at lunch, and beat the queues by arriving at noon on the dot. It was OK – not great, not terrible, not exciting, but competent. The best dish was a composed salad of lentils with burrata (that's posh mozzarella) with mint, sourdough croutons and shredded beetroot. This was one of those plates that simply works, thanks to lentils of perfect texture and seasoning, the welcome sharpness of the beet and herb to set off the creamy cheese, and the bread for chewiness and crunch. It wasn't a complicated dish but it was executed just right. Semolina-crusted calamari, another Granger classic, was less successful, with the timing those crucial few seconds off – the squid rings were soggy and the lemon aïoli wasn't sharp enough to revive them.
Main courses both came in metal dishes they hadn't been cooked in, one of my least favourite presentational affectations. Fish curry had rice at one end, fish and sauce at the other, herbs and fried garlic on top. It was fine, and pickled cucumber on the side offered acidity and sweetness; if you cooked it at home, you'd expect a pat on the back, though not a round of applause. Lamb meatballs were so soft they were off-putting, and the tomato and tamarind sauce was heavy-handed; if you cooked it at home, you'd be mumbling about needing to tweak the recipe.
You can have a "full Aussie breakfast" here for £12.25, but the other meals will be more expensive. It's a perfectly OK local cafe-restaurant. If Granger & Co weren't new, and he weren't on TV, there would be no queues; but it is, he is, and there are.
• Granger & Co, 175 Westbourne Grove, London W11, 020-7229 9111. Open Mon-Sat 7am-11pm; Sun 8am-10pm. No booking. Meal for two with wine and service, about £80.
