Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens Launches Restaurant Interlude

LEONARDSLEE LAKES & GARDENS LAUNCHES RESTAURANT INTERLUDE

Restaurant Interlude is a new restaurant destination at Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens - the historic 200 acre estate, with Grade I Listed gardens, near Horsham in West Sussex. The restaurant is open for dinner from Wednesday to Saturday weekly, with ten tables. Bookings are online at www.restaurant-interlude.co.uk.

Leonardslee House.

Interlude connects lovers of fine dining with the

very spirit of Leonardslee, the finest woodland gardens in England, carefully curated for over 200 years. Every dish in each seasonal, multicourse tasting menu is designed to a huntergatherer farmer concept of food that’s foraged, cultivated and raised on the estate or close by. It is savoured and enjoyed as an intimate dining experience, a small, exclusive dinner party within the estate’s Italianate mansion house.” says owner Penny Streeter OBE.

The hospitality entrepreneur, owner of

vineyards in the UK and South Africa, bought the Leonardslee estate in 2017. She has opened the restaurant (October 19th 2018) after 18 months’ intensive restoration of the gardens and Grade II Listed mansion house. The gardens will open in early 2019.

Diners can feast on the multiple courses that include for example: estate rabbit, winter purslane, hogweed cider and charcoal; also fallow deer with local braai and sour raspberry; and oyster, foraged greens and juniper.

Penny Streeter brought Executive Chef Jean

20 JANUARY 2019 SOUTHWATER Life To advertise call 01403 588618 or visit www.horshampublications.com

LEONARDSLEE LAKES & GARDENS LAUNCHES INTERLUDE

Interlude Restaurant.

Delport from his native South Africa 8 months ago to plan and prepare for the launch - from recruiting his team, which includes Chef Ruan Pretorius, to designing new kitchens, creating original tasting menus and sourcing the finest ingredients from the estate and selected local farmers.

Jean has particular experience from South Africa of how to complement extraordinary tasting menus with fine wines. Guests at Interlude can enjoy a selection of wines from the owner’s vineyard at Benguela Cove, Hermanus in South Africa. In Sussex, Penny Streeter has planted 40 acres of vineyards at Leonardslee and at a second site, three miles away at Mannings Heath, where she has created the UK’s first golf and wine estate.

Guests arriving at the mansion house, built in 1855, are greeted in the grand hallway with music from a self-playing piano and drinks in the bar. They are then seated together at around 7pm in the restaurant, enjoying views across acres of gardens in the steep valley below, and east and south across to the South Downs.

Penny Streeter OBE is the owner of the Benguela Collection vineyards and hospitality group. It includes the 400 acre Mannings Heath Golf and Wine Estate, located three miles from Leonardslee, and Benguela Cove vineyard in South Africa, as well as four restaurants and a hotel on the Garden Route.

Chef Jean Delport.

Executive Chef Jean Delport has worked with owner Penny Streeter 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 is noted as an innovator, changing and improving upon his own menus and selection of ingredients regularly.

Chef Ruan Pretorius began his career, and was finally head chef at restaurant Terroir in the Cape winelands in South Africa. Terroir is one of South Africa’s most decorated restaurants, in the top 20 of the country for 19 years running. He decided to join Jean Delport in the UK to meet an exciting new challenge at Restaurant Interlude. #restaurantinterlude Facebook: www.facebook.com/InterludeSussex Twitter: www.twitter.com/InterludeSussex Instagram: www.instagram.com/interludesussex

The 200 acre Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens, attracted some 50,000 visitors a year until it closed in 2010 as a result of financial difficulties. It was a favourite destination for families drawn by the outstanding displays of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, magnolias and bluebells.

From March 2019 visitors can again enjoy the gardens and the 19th-century Italianate style house, listed Grade II for architectural merit, and

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To advertise call 01403 588618 or visit www.horshampublications.com SOUTHWATER Life JANUARY 2019 23

LEONARDSLEE LAKES & GARDENS LAUNCHES INTERLUDE

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 21 a unique doll’s house exhibition on site. A rare colony of wallabies, wildfowl and huge carp in the seven ponds are a further attraction.

The garden restoration project has been described as the largest of its kind since Heligan in the 1990s. With no maintenance work carried out for eight years, it has required a team of up to 20 gardeners working since the summer of 2017 to restore the gardens, including clearing nearly 10 miles of pathways along the steep valley landscape.

Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens and Mannings Heath Golf & Wine Estate are divisions of The Benguela Collection, a wine producer and hospitality group that Penny Streeter started in 2013 with the acquisition of the Benguela Cove Wine Estate, at the edge of South Africa’s southern coast. The group now includes four restaurants and a hotel on the Garden Route.

Penny Streeter owner of Interlude, CEO Leonardslee.

A new Pinotage planting in 2018 brings the total of vines under cultivation to 66,000 across 16 hectares at Leonardslee and a second site, three miles away at Mannings Heath, where a vineyard was planted in 2017 to create the UK’s first golf and wine estate.

Total production is projected at some 100 tonnes, 75,000 bottles of sparkling wine annually: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier - and now a non-sparkling Pinotage. The first crop is due in 2020 and first release of wine in 2023.