Tamburlaine Hotel to open in Cambridge with former Waterside Inn chef
First announced in December 2015, the 155-bedroom hotel on Station Road will be the O’Callaghan group’s first UK opening. Rooms will start at £200 per night.
General manager will be Zac Pearse, former manager of Malmaison’s Charterhouse Square London and the Hotel du Vin in Henley-on-Thames.
Executive chef will be Alan Dann, whose career has included roles at the three Michelin starred Waterside Inn in Bray, Restaurant Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, and Restaurant Michel Guérard in southwest France, as well as head chef positions throughout France and at English country hotels.
Dann will oversee all food at the hotel, including in the main Brasserie, which will serve a menu of locally sourced, seasonal dishes and grills from breakfast to dinner.
Typical dishes will include grilled breast of wood pigeon with puy lentils, pickled girolles and parsnip; Blythburgh pork with heritage carrots and Aspall cider jus; or from the grill, a rare-breed beef rib eye; Barnsley chop; and Norfolk Black chicken supreme.
There will also be a cocktail bar.
Cocktails will take inspiration from the university and history of Cambridge, such as the King’s College Spritz, with Cambridge gin, Aperol, lemon juice, and rhubarb spirit with Champagne; or the Cambridge Sour, with Monkey Shoulder, Disaronno, lemon juice, gomme syrup and egg white.
The hotel – which is named after a play by Christopher Marlowe (a former fellow of Cambridge University’s Corpus Christi College) ‒ will also feature the colonial-style Garden Room, offering afternoon tea, Champagne and cocktails.
A delicatessen, Steam, will offer fresh salads and daily sandwiches, plus yoghurt and fruit pots for breakfast. It will also serve wine and charcuterie in the evenings.
The property also has five conference rooms available to hire for meetings and events.
The décor comes from the Shoreditch-based Bryan O’Sullivan Studio, and features a double-height lobby in the entrance hall, a feature staircase, an overlooking library, pendant lighting, large windows, leather banquettes in the dining areas, vibrant foliage in the Garden Room, and bold tiled floors and neon lighting in the Steam deli.
“We are very excited to be opening this significant and stunning hotel in Cambridge,” says Pearse. “We want locals to see Tamburlaine as their hotel; a place where they can come for a special dinner with family, cocktails or afternoon tea with friends, or grab a coffee and sandwich from our deli on their way to the station. Tamburlaine is a vibrant place for everyone to enjoy.”
The family-run O’Callaghan Hotel Group operates four properties in Dublin – the first of which, the MontClare, opened in 1990 ‒ plus The Elliott Hotel in Gibraltar, and the Annapolis Hotel in Maryland, USA.
