Michelin Star Restaurant Interlude Opens 19 May 2021
Bookings are open for Michelin Star Restaurant Interlude from 19 May 2021
Guests are booking now to dine at Restaurant Interlude from May 19th 2021. This is an opportunity to enjoy fine dining from a superb tasting menu at what is recognised as one of the top restaurants in Sussex and the whole of England.
It is widely reported in the media how South African chef Jean Delport and his team are doing amazing things at Restaurant Interlude - a jewel in the crown of Grade I Listed Leonardslee Lakes and Gardens estate - where they have won a Michelin Star for a second successive year.
The Michelin Star award is recognised internationally as one of the most prestigious accolades in the world of fine dining. Within just ten months of opening Interlude in October 2018, Jean and his team received their first Michelin Star. He says that winning a star is a challenge for any chef:
“The first time we got the award was pure elation…the day I got the email I burst into tears. We definitely made the right decision in what we set out to achieve at Restaurant Interlude, creating a new dining experience from scratch, installing kitchens and dining facilities in the Grade II Listed mansion.”
Chef Jean formerly worked with estate owner Penny Streeter OBE at her restaurant in Somerset West, Cape Town, for several years. Jean trained and won awards at the prestigious Zevenwacht Chef School in South Africa.
With a background in classical French and English cooking, including several seasons in Ireland, he has built an international reputation as an innovator, changing and improving upon his own menus and selection of ingredients.
Restaurant Interlude’s tasting menu is inspired by the Grade I Listed woodland gardens with ingredients foraged or grown on the 240-acre Leonardslee estate. Other produce is sourced from selected local farms, all individually visited by Chef Jean. Restaurant Interlude is open for dinner from Wednesday to Saturday weekly, with all bookings in advance, online.
The restaurant offers the diner superb views across the gardens and its Pinotage vineyard, planted in 2018. There are 72,000 vines under cultivation across 15 hectares at Leonardslee and the neighbouring site at Mannings Heath Golf and Wine Estate.
Owner Penny Streeter OBE brought Executive Chef Jean Delport from his native South Africa to open the restaurant. He is only the second South African chef to win a Michelin Star, and was one of the youngest recipients, aged 31. He says:
“We have designed each dish in the seasonal, multi-course tasting menu with a hunter-gatherer theme of food that’s foraged, cultivated or raised on the estate - or locally, very close by. The ambience is of an intimate dining experience; a small, exclusive dinner party within the estate’s Italianate mansion.”
Guests can enjoy a seasonal menu that might include: estate rabbit, winter purslane, hogweed cider and charcoal. Also fallow deer with local braai and sour raspberry; or oyster, foraged greens and juniper.
Guests arriving at Restaurant Interlude in Leonardslee house, which was built in 1855, are greeted in the grand hallway with music from a self-playing piano. Following drinks, perhaps enjoying one of the superb cocktails, guests are seated together at around 7pm in the restaurant. There are magical views across the acres of woodland gardens in the valley below, and east and south across to the South Downs.
Chef Jean complements the innovative tasting menus with a superb selection of wines from his native South Africa in particular, including from Benguela Cove Lagoon Wine Estate, also owned by Penny Streeter, which is near Cape Town in South Africa.
