Tillingham restaurant review: vineyard dining in the Rother Triangle, East Sussex

I can remember reading Grace Dent’s review of the restaurant at Tillingham and thinking ‘ouch’. In September 2025 Dent finished her appraisal with the brutal line: “We left, and skipped the gift shop for keepsakes, because there was very little here to remember”. Eight months later I find myself on a waiting list for a table; clearly enthusiasm for one of England’s trendiest vineyards has withstood the criticism.

My experience of Tillingham also comes with its criticisms, but I’ll make clear here rather than waiting to the end: while I too skipped the gift shop there is enough here, on balance, to have a memorably delightful experience.

The Rother Triangle Restaurant

This was the final stop on my tour of the Rother Triangle, the cluster of six vineyards around Rye where vineyards including Tillingham, Oastbrook and Charles Palmer all sit within several miles of each other. While most of the Rother Triangle vineyards offer charcuterie boards and light bites, Tillingham is the only one with a restaurant - not to mention the one with the thickest press file, with praise across The Times, Time Out, Stylist and Condé Nast Traveler as well as listings on premium travel sites such as Mr & Mrs Smith. It is also the one pulling in a markedly younger and more diverse crowd than I’ve seen during my English wine travels.

Why that is, exactly, is harder to pin down than the marketing suggests. The pieces I’ve read credit low-intervention winemaking, thoughtful Insta-friendly design, regular events that go beyond wine - think yoga in the vines - and a strong sustainability story. This isn’t completely unique to Tillingham but it’s pulled off in such an apparently effortless way that it does it more effectively than most.

Tillingham is, by some distance, the most professionalised operation of the Rother Triangle vineyards. At the smaller vineyards of the Rother Triangle if the person you are speaking to aren’t themselves the winemaker you feel like you’re only once-removed. That’s not the vibe at Tillingham, where the staff we interacted with directly ranged from unmotivated to aloof but friendly.

The dining room

The upstairs restaurant room is a treat that whets your appetite before you’ve even glanced at the seasonal menu. Full-height windows looking out across the vines, candlelit tables with freshly cut wildflowers, and an open kitchen from which the real delights spring. If you are dining as a couple, ask for a window table when you book - surely someone else has asked as well, but it’s worth a shot.

The wine

I had a glass of the Chenin Blanc, raised for six months in qvevri (Georgian clay amphorae buried in the cellar floor), and a taste of the sparkling rosé. The Chenin is closer to an amber wine than to anything else in the Rother Triangle, with skin contact giving it weight, grip and a flavour that other reviewers have pinned down as underripe greengage or mirabelle plum. That tracks with what I had in the glass. The sparkling rosé is a Pet Nat: as cloudy and funky as you would expect it.

I’ll be upfront. My own taste sits a few steps away from low-intervention. I want a little more fruit weight than the qvevri Chenin gives, and a Pet Nat before dinner is a hard sell for me. None of which is a criticism of what’s in the bottle. If you came to Tillingham for the natural-wine angle, this is the address. If your reference points are Nyetimber and Gusbourne, the rest of the Rother Triangle is more likely to give you what you want in terms of what’s in the glass - but that doesn’t mean you should skip Tillingham entirely.

The food

The kitchen is the reason Tillingham earns the recommendation, and the reason the Grace Dent verdict feels harsher than my visit warranted - unless it spurned them to make improvements, in which case, thank you Grace. Up to that point I felt like Tillingham was coasting on cool, but here were dishes that were made with love and attention.

That kind of attention didn’t always extend to service. Early in the evening the kitchen called for service six times before plates were collected. Asked what vegetable came with the scallop (I had it down as celeriac - and it was a tremendous dish to kick the evening off by the way), the server was unsure but rather than check with the kitchen, confidently went with fennel. It was not fennel. The friendliness and good intentions across the floor were real, but a little extra polish would have elevated our evening.

The shared 900g ribeye which was comfortably shared between three was the standout. The meat was beautifully flavoured, the peppercorn sauce creamy and tangy in equal measure, and the chips a reminder that the British pub chip, done well, is in a league of its own: thick-cut, crisp shelled, fluffy inside. There was some disagreement at the table about whether the steak had landed at the medium we’d asked for, but no one was leaving meat on the plate. The courgette and broccoli sides held their own without trying too hard.

The vanilla cheesecake on stewed rhubarb was the dish I wasn’t expecting to fall for. Anyone who’s read my Leaping Hare review knows I have form for rhubarb desserts. The cheesecake was light, almost cloudlike, and the rhubarb had been cooked until it surrendered, keeping just enough sharpness to push back against the cream. I’d order it again without looking at the rest of the menu.

The verdict

Tillingham is not perfect - scratch beneath the cool exterior and you can find fault. And yet it has a charm and a commitment to an ethos that doesn’t happen by accident. The food was good enough that I’d happily go back in a heartbeat, even with the wobbles in service and a wine list that doesn’t always play to my taste. Go in knowing what kind of operation it is: a polished business presenting as a rustic farm, with a low-intervention wine list, and beautifully cooked food that will have you forget about everything else.

Practical information

The restaurant serves dinner Wednesday to Sunday from 6pm and lunch Friday to Sunday from midday. Booking is essential and waiting lists are common at weekends. The bar opens at 11am daily, with wood-fired pizza available 11am to 10pm. A happy hour from 5pm to 6pm offers a pizza and a glass of wine or local beer for £15, and three-glass tasting flights at the bar are also £15. Dogs are welcome in the bar and pizza barn but not in the restaurant; four dog-friendly bedrooms are available upstairs. Address: Dew Farm, Dew Lane, Peasmarsh, East Sussex, TN31 6XD. Confirm any of the above on tillingham.com before travelling. Find out about vineyard restaurants in East Sussex.