Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons

Italian-sounding enough for you? For your info: in this case the ‘Sons’ are the brains of the operation. More to the point, the ‘Sons’ (Robert Marchetti and Maurice Terzini) represent the golden partnership behind Bondi’s top-shelf Icebergs Dining Room. Marchetti and Terzini have decided not to transplant the Iceberg’s concept, but opted for a trattoria, albeit in a scale befitting its Crown Casino location. Terzini is a safe pair of hands when it comes to launching a venue such as this, every last nook and cranny has been designed down to the last detail. He brought over Rome-based architect Carl Pickering, of Lazzarini Pickering Architects, to deliver that Italian touch, and transplanted an Italian façade onto the face of the Southbank location. Short of tearing down and resurrecting an actual Italian façade (too Vegas!), Terzini had a building in mind and commandeered the services of Digiglass and designer Aaron Cusack from Pixels Per Inch to bring his vision to light.Working with photos shot in Naples, Cusack replicated an Italian building along the 70m façade to the promenade and the 45m wall to the retail street concourse. After experimenting with film and being dissatisfied with its capacity to fade and be damaged, the Digiglass manufacturing process of sandwiching a soft PVB (polyvinyl butyral) interlayer containing the image between two sheets of glass, was chosen as it protected the image from any wear and tear. The job consisted of approximately 600 fittings of the external glasswork. The interior is finished primarily in tiles set among neutral black surfaces, creating tunnels and dynamic geometric shapes. It’s a restaurant which makes no bones about its Italian appeal, a place to sit, chat, eat, and — with its ‘no reservations’ policy plus the sheer size of the place — you can sit, chat and eat Marchetti’s sumptuous Italian fare all day long.