'Stupidly tasty': the verdict on Icebergs 2.0

Great food questions of the ages: why do Victorians insist potato scallops are "cakes"? Do I really need to add a bay leaf to this stew? And is the sgroppino – lemon sorbet mixed with vodka and prosecco – a cocktail or a dessert? 

After visiting the recently relaunched Icebergs, where sgroppinos ($22 each) are whipped table-side by white-jacketed waiters, I'm still no closer to an answer to that last one. Guests are knocking back the slushie for grown-ups like kids with red cordial; before cheese, after oysters, on the side with steak while double-handling shiraz. 

To hell with food-and-drink matching rules: Icebergs is back and Bondi is keen to party.

Restaurateur Maurice Terzini opened Icebergs Dining Room and Bar for spritzes and frutti di mare in 2002. Gleaming on the top level of Bondi's landmark swimming club, it has long been a place to spot full-time designers and part-time models alongside bankers, big shots and the occasional former Olympian.

Views to Australia's most famous curve of sand are a drawcard, naturally, but joints where you can pop a chardonnay and perve at the surf come and go in Bondi like a backpacker's sunburn. Icebergs' staying power hugely due to Terzini's passion for detail, from the volume of the Coltrane soundtrack to the typography to how staff move across the floor.

There's also the Lazzarini Pickering architecture, which brings the Pacific inside with turquoise and blues, two decades of outlandish dance parties, and a shifting menu of elevated Italo-Australian flavours. Synonymous with celebrations and summer, Icebergs is arguably Sydney's only "iconic" restaurant if you don't count Harry's Cafe de Wheels.

Terzini closed the old girl for renovations in May last year and it didn't reopen until mid-December. A lot of the changes, such as the reinforced roof and larger kitchen, aren't obvious to punters; most significantly for them, the south-side terrace is now an enclosed, ocean-facing space for private dining, events, weddings – anything.

Display cases heave with market-price lobsters on ice near the main dining room, now flanked by a walk-in wine fridge stocked with many Italian and Australian wines made with minimal intervention.

The menu has also had a significant refresh. Alex Prichard has led the kitchen since 2019 and the guy is quite fond of native and Japanese ingredients. Maybe too fond, I thought when I ate at Icebergs two years ago, with many dishes more modern Australian than new-school Italo. Geraldton wax leaf with caviar? Ma dai!

Prichard has course-corrected back towards the boot, although you can still expect green ants and wax leaf to sharpen ferociously fresh coral trout crudo drizzled with olive oil. 

Koshihikari rice, traditionally used for sushi, becomes a risotto, but not for the sake of novelty: the short grains create a dish that's light but still creamy, topped with marigold petals and raw spot prawns that radiate the long flavours of rust-red XO. Intense. Stupidly tasty.

Two courses cost $110 per person, but consider the extra $20 to pick all three. It would be a shame to miss what's pretty much a perfect lemon souffle, with the contrasting temperatures of salted almond gelato and warm citrus sauce. Remember the lemon delicious pudding? It's an elevated version of that.

Before sweets, though, pasta. Perhaps tubes of cacio e pepe ziti (like penne) or quail and guineafowl ragu clinging to seashells of conchiglie. There's vongole, of course, because ancient laws state all coastal Italian restaurants must serve spaghetti with tiny clams or face the punishment of reduced patronage.

We pick the market fish (barbecued sand whiting, sweet and fleshy with oregano butter) and a marbled shoulder cut of roast kurobuta pork, sticky with fermented garlic honey (fine, but could do with more savoury depth). 

If you want to have a slap-up, there's also a supplementary menu, featuring salt-crusted rib-eye ($150) and translucent pearl meat bright with lemon zest, white soy and big wheels of radish ($32).

But I'd be happy to return just for that ridiculously satisfying risotto, a glass of Robert Stein 2022 riesling ($18) from Mudgee, and precision grilled fish – and the whopping ocean view, of course, which is still the restaurant's biggest star. 

Service, by the way, is tighter and more effortless than previous visits (although breathing room between the fish and pork landing might have been nice, given the table was sharing). 

Will Icebergs be kicking similar goals in another 20 years? Provided the top-shelf produce it uses hasn't become exorbitantly expensive, all signs point to yes. The foundations are strong (and now so is the roof) and the appeal of cocktails and seafood by the beach is eternal.

Another round of sgroppinos, please, and a toast to great Sydney dining.

Vibe: Italo-Aus clubhouse celebrating seafood, surf and wine

Go-to dish: Koshihikari risotto with XO and spot prawn crudo (pictured, as part of a two-course menu)

Drinks: Mood-lifting cocktails and a smart wine list built around sustainable producers and Italian grapes

Cost: Two-course menu, $110 per head; three-course, $130

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine