The modern club is serving everything from nostalgic roasts to fine dining-inspired dishes, without breaking the bank, writes Aimee Chanthadavong
If you’d told me 10 years ago that I’d be bragging about a club meal one day, I would’ve laughed. But here we are in 2025, and the club food scene has completely proven me wrong.
Thanks in large part to initiatives like the Local Club Perfect Plate Awards, currently in full swing across NSW, clubs are plating up dishes that would make any gastropub weep. Celebrity chefs and judges Matt Moran and Courtney Roulston, along with former NRL player Nathan Hindmarsh, who moonlights as a food critic every year for the awards, are on a statewide tasting tour as I write this. They’re doing the hard task – and honours – of tasting their way through dozens of nominated club dishes. Honestly, heroes.
But these kinds of competitions aren’t just good fun, they’re doing us, the average punter, a solid. Because while the price of everything seems to be just constantly rising, club bistros and their counterpart restaurants have stayed firmly in the realm of affordable.
I was reminded of this recently during a birthday lunch at Marrow & Co., Bankstown Sports Club’s newest premium steakhouse. As per tradition, our group ordered half the menu. Usually, even when we do this, we’re often quietly planning a sneaky Maccas run on the way home. But not this time. The food kept coming, the flavours delivered, and the servings? Generous. We were so well fed, we ended up doing slow laps around the club just to work it off. Digestive cardio, if you will.
Of course, it’s all very exciting. Confit pork belly and crispy crackle, sous vide beef fillet with fig puree, black sesame genoise (a fancy term for sponge cake). These are things you can now find at your local.
And it’s not just the ingredients that have levelled up. Everything arrives plated like it’s auditioning for a spot on your Instagram feed. Beautiful, bold, a little bit bougie, yet somehow, still cheaper than most standalone restaurants. The modern club kitchen is a different beast entirely.
Still, I’ll admit, sometimes I just want to walk into my local any time of the week for a simple roast. No jus and no foam. Just meat, three veg, plain gravy, and that sense of nostalgia of what club meals used to be like.
So yes, I’m here for the culinary evolution. But I’m also here for the classics. And isn’t that the beauty of it? These days, you can have both on the same menu, from the same kitchen, and all without taking out a small loan.
Long live the club bistro.
Image credit: iStock/FilippoBacci
