MasterChef finalist to open new Cambridge restaurant Vanderlyle

Alex Rushmer, who closed his Cambridge restaurant the Hole in the Wall last year, has announced plans to open a new site next year.

Rushmer decided not to renew the lease on his former two-AA-rosette restaurant after six years of operation.

In partnership with his sous chef from the Hole in the Wall, Lawrence Butler, the MasterChef 2010 finalist announced his new restaurant will open in the spring of 2019 at 38-40 Mill Road in Cambridge in a former Subway outlet.

Rushmer described the restaurant as "small, relaxed and fun". It is planned to serve a regularly changing menu using locally-sourced ingredients, will have an open kitchen, and will be open four nights a week.

"I'm truly delighted to say that after extensive searching, planning and negotiation, that the dream restaurant which Lawrence and I have spent the past year imagining is going to become a reality," wrote Rushmer in a blog post.

The site will be named Vanderlyle, after the title of a song by American rock band the National.

"Being presented with a blank canvas presented something of a challenge," wrote Rushmer. "Our ‘concept', for what it's worth, is simply to cook really great food, without bluster or pretension, so the name had to be ambiguous enough not to have any connotations or create a sense of expectation."

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