Competition is heating up as celebrity chefs Matt Moran and Courtney Roulston, along with NRL legend Nathan Hindmarsh, hit the road again to uncover the best club meal in NSW for the 2025 Your Local Club Perfect Plate Awards.
ClubsNSW CEO Rebecca Riant said many of the state’s best restaurants are now found inside registered clubs, and this year’s competition promises to be fiercely competitive.
“Whether it’s a dry-aged steak, a hearty seafood risotto, a gourmet woodfired pizza or indulgences for those with a sweet tooth, clubs are renowned for the quality of their food at affordable prices, all served up in comfortable surroundings,” she said.
This year’s competition has attracted 200 entries, including Coomealla Memorial Sporting Club’s pork belly salad braised in ginger, orange and star anise, with crispy popcorn pork crackle; Mollymook Golf Club’s lemon myrtle baked barramundi with poached scallops, saffron sauce, and rainbow salad; and Ryde-Parramatta Golf Club’s 12-hour slow0cooked red wine lamb shank wrapped in crispy puff pastry with truffle and garlic mash with rosemary oil.
A new category, Perfect Pizza, has been added the line-up, which has attracted entries including an 18-hour slow-cooked lamb pizza from Bathurst RSL and mortadella and burrata pizza from Panthers Penrith Leagues Club.
The new category adds to last year’s introduction of Best Dessert. For this year, entries for this category include Kareela’s Dubai chocolate gelato, The Greens North Sydney’s Kinder Bueno sundae, and a Japanese cotton cheesecake by the team at SSA&A Albury.
In addition to all the tasting that will be done by the competition’s ambassadors, Moran and Roulston, along with Hindmarsh, club patrons are invited to taste participating dishes and cast their votes, between 2 May and 15 June, by scanning each entry’s unique QR code or filling out a simple form and scoring the dishes out of five.
While diners can only vote for each Perfect Plate dish once, diners are encouraged to try as many entries as they like for a chance to win daily $100 vouchers. Two diners who vote for the most Perfect Plate dishes will win a ‘foodie escape’ for two people valued at up to $3,500.
The NRMA has signed on as a presenting partner for this year’s Perfect Plate Awards, giving My NRMA members 10 per cent cashback in their My NRMA app on their first Perfect Plate dish purchase, and two per cent cashback for purchases thereafter.
Winners will be crowned across 13 regions based on average patron ratings, with additional state-wide titles awards awarded in the small, medium, and large club categories, plus overall state winners for the Perfect Pizza and Best Dessert categories.
