Clubs NSW’s Perfect Plates have been served and won for 2025, with Kiama Leagues Club’s Sails Bistro taking out the Best Dessert category with their fresh and innovative take on a panna cotta named Panna Colada.

With ingredients transporting diners to a tropical oasis with hints of pineapple, coconut, and malibu, the addition of the biscotti was added from another dessert that was tested and designed by recently departed chef Gavin Robinson, catering manager Sarah Rebbeck explained.

“He’s [Robinson] a bit of a dessert person and he actually came up with three different dishes,” Rebbeck said.

“We sat at lunch one day and he brought them all out and we tried them.

“In the end, the panna cotta was the one that was the most consistent, but we love biscotti, and we love the panna cotta, [so] we put them together.”

While the dessert proved popular amongst patrons, Rebbeck and marketing manager Maddie Battagello did not expect for the club to receive top honours.

“We had some great feedback for it, but I did think about whether or not we could win it,” Rebbeck said.

“I didn’t go into that thinking we were definitely a shoo-in for that (Best Dessert), because I had seen pictures of other [desserts] clubs posted, [like] the complicated ones,” Battagello said.

Rebbeck was quick to acknowledge and make mention that the award was made possible by everyone on the team at Kiama Leagues Club, and made special mention to bistro manager Kim Smith who really sold the dish to customers.

“Kim, our manager, she would see someone umming and ahhing and be like ‘you’ve got to get this,’ she was very passionate about it,” Rebbeck said.

“It’s one thing to create a dish, but then you have got to get everyone to keep making it and it be consistent, you’ve got to have the people that are selling it and telling people about it.”

Previously named Chef’s Table, Clubs NSW ran the competition where chefs from clubs would cook from a mystery-box for judges, where the Perfect Plate categories allow the clubs to showcase too the consumers and travel around to sample the competition.

“Clubs are community based, so this brings in your members being part of it and they are voting for their club,” Rebbeck said.

“I think bringing it to this [competition] really involves your members and your community and it is also great because you can go travel around and try everyone else’s perfect dishes, which is really fun."

“Kiama really gets behind these competitions, I think the second I posted we won, it was instantly shared on the Kiama community page on Facebook,” Battagello said.

Kiama Leagues Club was also entered in the state medium club and Illawarra and Shoalhaven categories with the Middle Eastern Lamb Rack with the dish finishing third in both which both Battagello and Rebbeck are “still very stoked about.”

Club NSW’s Perfect Plate 2025 was sponsored by NRMA, and the awards night was held at the Western Sydney Convention Centre in Penrith where competition ambassadors and celebrity chefs Matt Moran and Courtney Roulston and NRL legend Nathan Hindmarsh were in attendance.

Towards the end of the night, the Kiama Leagues Club were already looking to next year for their next perfect plate and a dessert to retain the title with unconfirmed reports of the recipes being scribbled onto napkins.