Icebergs Dining Room and Bar’s first service following its months-long restoration will be December 14 – exactly 20 years to the day that Maurice Terzini first opened the Bondi icon.

Lovers of Icebergs need not worry. Maurice Terzini says they’ve worked hard to maintain what has made it an iconic destination; a restaurant he says that really knows what it is. “It’s a fun restaurant to be in,” he says. “We always want that. I don’t want a boring restaurant. I want to laugh and have conversation, eat and drink well. I’m not interested in just sitting at the table, consuming food, and not talking. I want people to have fun. That’s what works really well for us, and it’s cemented into our DNA.”

Terzini describes the changes at Icebergs being a “restoration.” It was the more practical matter of replacing a roof that had 47 leaks in the last week of service that drove the decision to make an investment that Terzini says will carry them through “the next two decades of the Icebergs journey.” It’s allowed them to redesign the space, taking twenty years of learning to improve the experience for both those who work there and those who dine.

There’s an air of continuity with Carl Pickering and the team at Lazzarini Pickering Architetti in Rome, who originally designed Icebergs two decades ago, returning to steward the design of Icebergs into the future.

“One of the most important things that we did change is the lighting,” says Terzini. Milan-based iGuzzini were used to create a new nocturnal light landscape, which says Terzini, is important to the Icebergs, the lights having been “pretty much replicated all over the world.”

The brief given to head chef Alex Prichard is much the same as before, which is to say, flavours Terzini’s parents would recognise, and the food that they would have cooked, with those added Icebergs luxury staples. “Crudo, lobsters, caviar, all that stuff, coral trout, Murray cod,” says Terzini. “The fish programme has always been very solid as the years went on, I think there was a bit more dedication to seafood, being able to serve seafood that’s pristine.”

While there’s an obvious Italian thread that runs through Icebergs from the design to the food, drink and even the ethos of eating, Terzini is clear that it isn’t absolutely everything. “I lived in Italy for 12 years of my life, but I’m 58 now, and over the last 20 years I’ve really come to terms with not necessarily having to carry the Italian flag all the time.”

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On the wine front less is more, Terzini saying that he’s not a big fan of sprawling, and unwieldy wine lists. “To me it means absolutely nothing, unless you can service that correctly to every single customer that comes in the door. I just don’t believe it’s worth having.” The Icebergs list has reduced from 580 to around, a still sizeable, 280 labels. “We’re more interested in a better narrative, and a much stronger narrative rather than just having a big list,” he says.

“We’ve got as many temperature-controlled fridges as possible, so we’ve introduced a little bit of the Dolphin philosophy,” he says. That is, lots of chilled reds, and a list that is less French, with a focus on coastal vineyards, and more Italo varieties. “Easier drinking,” is to Terzini’s taste with many wines under 12 per cent alcohol.

Terzini says there’ll be an increased focus on the bar menu, and that in the past the bar had possibly been seen as second billing to the restaurant. “It’s the same produce, it’s still the same style of service,” he says. “You can come into the bar and have a plate of pasta and still have the wine list as the dining room if that’s what you want.” Terzini is clear that although this marks a new era for his icon of the Australian hospitality scene they don’t want to be anything else except the Icebergs, “a quality, Italo-Aus restaurant.”

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