Matty Opai talks ‘invisible restaurant’ and 10 years of service at Icebergs Dining Room & Bar

A quick note: spare a thought for our friends in bars up on the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, as well as the Northern Rivers area, as this cyclone approaches the coast. I’ve already seen a few bars announce that they’re closing the next couple of days, in preparation for Cyclone Alfred. Be safe — I know the wider Australian bar world is watching and hoping for the best.

Look, maybe it’s the view. Icebergs Dining Room & Bar might be one of Australia’s most famous restaurants; the word icon gets thrown around a lot, but few can lay as merited claim to it as Icebergs, perched atop the cliffs and overlooking Bondi Beach, with views out to the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean.

Icebergs turns 24 years old this year. That’s an impressive stint for any venue. But Icebergs has remained relevant in a way few venues manage over the course of decades. I don’t think it’s just the view — Icebergs, as my guest on this episode and I discuss, is far from a tourist trap; I think it has a lot to do with the hospitality you get there, the experience — things which co-owner and restaurateur Maurice Terzini is well known for.

My guest on this episode, however, is the guy responsible for delivering that experience at the bar: bar director Matty Opai.

Matty is a generous host, an award-winning bar manager, and someone who celebrated 10 years of service at Icebergs last year. He’s also a busy guy: he was tasked with bringing the Icebergs bar experience to a six month summer takeover at Crown in Barangaroo, the Icebergs Harbour Bar; pulling shifts at Icebergs in Bondi during summer, their busiest time, and organising brand collaborations; and working on his own nascent booze brand, Chell-Oh!, which he created with Icebergs head chef Alex Prichard.

He’s had a terrific innings so far — and, we’re told, with big things on the horizon — having started at Icebergs as a glassy, to the heights of bar director, and expanding the Terzini Icebergs empire.

That relevance of Icebergs, so many years on, I think can be seen in Matty’s take on the Icebergs Sgroppino — made with tequila, and theatrically made tableside — which has been moving up the Boothby Drink of the Year Awards Top 50, too, landing at number seven in 2023, and at number five in 2024. It’s a solid indication of the awareness and affection the industry has for both Icebergs and Opai.

This episode is part of a series presented by Never Never Distilling Co., talking to the people who run Australia’s best bars. Never Never Distilling Co. is the South Australian gin you’ll find behind Australia’s best bars — they’ve won all the awards that matter, but more importantly it has become a bartender favourite since 2016, thanks to the quality of the spirit and their focus on great juniper character. For more information visit neverneverdistilling.com.au or get in touch with the friendly local Never Never ambassador in your state.

Below, as ever we’ve got a few takeaways from the conversation with Matty, but do give the full episode a listen — few people embody generous hospitality the way Matty Opai does.

“Maurice likes the idea of the invisible restaurant.”

Maurice Terzini is one of Australia’s most respected restaurateurs for a reason. He’s a detail oriented operator, Matty says. And I love this idea of the invisible restaurant: “everything is oriented to the view,” Matty says, so that means that service should be quick, sharp, and unobtrusive — you don’t want to see the inner workings of how the experience comes to life. They want the guest focused on the experience, their companions — and that incredible view.

“The more you learn, the more you realise how much you don’t know.”

Before Icebergs, Matty was a bartender in Cronulla who thought — as he says here — that he was a hot shit bartender. His cousin — and acclaimed bartender in his own right — Lenny Opai was running the bar at Icebergs; Matty figured he could go be a shit hot bartender there.

But when he got there, he started as a glassy, and was a glassy for some time, as he learned the recipes for their drinks and deepened his knowledge.

“You either had to scrap, or make them laugh.”

Matty grew up in South Auckland, and as he says, most of his friends were bigger than him. Matty isn’t a small guy, to understate things. But to avoid the bullying that would go on, he had to play the class clown. And he thinks that’s where his generous hospitality came from — trying to keep everyone happy and entertained. “I like having fun, I like laughing, I like making people laugh — it’s a good feeling,” he says.