The Restaurant
Isca brings the bounty of Borde Hill garden to the plate. Everything we do is rooted in the Sussex terroir and inspired by our surroundings, from how we grow and source ingredients to a menu that captures the flavours of every season. The restaurant sings the song, the seasons call the tune.
The glasshouse dining room overlooks our Walled Garden of ‘edimental’ plants, from which Executive Chef Jack Hazell and Head Chef Philip McEnaney take inspiration, along with biodynamic fruit and vegetables from our very own Market Garden and the best meat, fish and seafood from nearby producers.
Sussex shapeshifts as the year evolves and so does its produce. To reflect this, our menu changes completely at every solstice and equinox. We always consider the whole ingredient – from root-to-tip and from nose-to-tail – because we believe that every part of a plant or beast is a delicacy in the making.
Our drinks are also made in tune with nature, with kombuchas, shrubs, teas and cocktails which put flowers and fruits from the garden to work, including our signature magnolia margarita. The low-intervention wine list is organised not by country but the environment in which wines are made – maritime, river, mountain, plateau – including some from our neighbouring vineyards here in Sussex.
This is joyful dining, one season at a time.
The Walled Kitchen Garden
Reimagined by designer Ann-Marie Powell, our Walled Garden is integral to everything we do at Isca. In a nod to biodynamic growing principles, each quadrant is named after an element – earth, wind, fire and water – through which diners are invited to wander or have seasonal drinks surrounded by the plants that inspired them.
Her design also pays tribute to Borde Hill’s history of plant-collecting which has, since the 19th century, made the estate home to myriad ‘edimental’ (edible ornamental) plants. From wild bergamot, winter savoury and Sichuan pepper to cha-cha chives, liquorice root and a pergola of vines, the garden is home to a vast world of flavours that find their way to the plate in surprising and delightful ways.
We talk about food metres,
not food miles
The Market Garden
Borde Hill began to convert the neighbouring Sugworth Farm into its biodynamic Market Garden in 2021. Just a stone’s throw from Isca, the produce grown here is the cornerstone of our cooking, with a rainbow of British staples – Spring’s peas, Summer’s tomatoes, Autumn’s squashes, Winter’s roots – as well as unusual ingredients such as Japanese shiso and Mexican quilqina, and cut flowers year-round – dahlias, cosmos, zinnias.
Biodynamic farming is a holistic approach set forth by the 20th century Austrian thinker, Rudolf Steiner. He advocated for working with nature, not against it. At Borde Hill, we see our estate as a whole system – with biodiverse plants and wildlife, fruitful soil fertilised with manure and compost preparations including homegrown yarrow and chamomile – and we let the lunar calendar guide how we sow and harvest.
We do this in pursuit not of big volumes, but big flavours – and land that keeps on giving us good food in perpetuity.
Borde Hill Estate
Set over 2000 acres on Sussex’s High Weald, Borde Hill is an estate with national botanical importance. At its heart sits our Elizabethan mansion house, rebuilt in the 16th century by Stephen Borde, grandson of Henry VIII’s private herbalist, Andrew Borde. A belief in the power of plants runs deep here – to nourish, to nurture and to cure.
For five generations, the Stephenson-Clarke family have been Borde Hill’s custodians, seeking out and cultivating rare plants and champion trees, shaping them into the ‘garden rooms’ for which we are known today – including the Garden of Allah, where Isca’s namesake, the Magnolia x Veitchii ‘Isca’, stands supreme.
Our kitchen forages and preserves many of the wild plants that grow on the estate, from wild garlic to myrtle and the magnolia flowers which we dry and add to our signature magnolia margaritas.
