The ‘bonkers’ London bar that’s just been named best in the world

Ryan Chetiyawardana in Lyaness
Ryan Chetiyawardana: ‘Some of the techniques we’ve done, I can fairly confidently say they’ve not been done anywhere else in the world’ - Paul Grover

On the way home from interviewing Mr Lyan, proprietor of Lyaness, I realise I have forgotten to ask a key question. Perhaps it is because I have had two of his zero-waste cocktails, one a martini made with fermented Maris Pipers, and it is not yet 5pm. Why, exactly, does he call himself Mr Lyan?

His real name is Ryan Chetiyawardana, 40, the youngest of three siblings born in Birmingham to Sri Lankan parents. He trained first as a chef, then as a biologist, then in fine art, then in philosophy, all experiences that would influence his next career move into the drinks industry. This week, Lyaness became the first bar in the world to be awarded three Pins in the Pinnacle guide (the equivalent of a restaurant being awarded three Michelin stars). This combination of scientific rigour, chef-like efficiency and philosophical curiosity gives him the air of a mad scientist – albeit one who is very sharply dressed in a crisp blue shirt.

The Lyaness bar
At Lyaness, the bartenders use ingredients so obscure they require a glossary - Paul Grover

His approach, which began with the opening of his first bar, White Lyan, in London 2013, is totally unique and just a little bit bonkers. “I’m quite happy reading scientific papers,” he says. “So if we’re doing something that’s quite novel, be it a new technique or an ingredient, we’re very lucky to have, like, legit science friends that we can go talk to.”

This is a man who, along with his crack team of mixologists, has made a liqueur inspired by Kentucky Fried Chicken and has used lamb and pig pancreas as part of a cocktail fermentation. Each drink is a delicious science experiment. At one point, “we had snails, and clay, and mummified citrus on the menu, and people would say, ‘cool, tell me more.’ [...] And some of the techniques we’ve done, I can fairly confidently say they’ve not been done anywhere else in the world.”

At Lyaness, Chetiyawardana’s flagship bar in the Sea Containers Hotel on London’s South Bank, the bartenders use ingredients so obscure they require a glossary. There is peated parsnip amazake (in layman’s terms, a take on a traditional Japanese drink made from parsnips fermented with koji mould), carrot vermouth, and liqueurs made from toast, cornflakes, and Diet Coke.

There is, reassuringly, no mention of pig’s livers or fossilised poo on the menu. (Yes, that is something Mr Lyan once used.) “Hyraceum is the fossilised poop of the rock hyrax [a medium-sized African mammal],” he says. “There’s no way of sugarcoating it, it’s fossilised poop, and it’s definitely weird. It tastes like walking into an old temple.” After he mentions this, I am nervous to order, although I needn’t be. My cocktail is expertly mixed on the vast marble bar, and the result is a brilliantly bittersweet gimlet they call the Context Club.

White Lyan, which Chetiyawardana closed in 2017, was a world first – the first bar to be entirely free from perishables. That means no lemon, no ice, no fruity garnishes. It was an experiment in proving that “luxury things don’t need to be wasteful,” he says.

“We did quite an extreme showcase of that. We took everything away – the only thing we threw away was vac-pack bags. When we first went to Hackney Council, they told us we didn’t produce enough waste to have a commercial waste bin.” White Lyan permanently changed the landscape of London’s drinks sceneThe Evening Standard described it as “a cocktail enthusiast’s equivalent of the 1966 World Cup.”

The Context Club cocktail at Lyaness bar
Chetiyawardana and his ‘crack team of mixologists’ bubble up obscure, thrilling cocktails. ‘Each drink is a delicious science experiment,’ writes Buchanan - Paul Grover

His waste-not-want-not attitude is a hangover from childhood, he says. “That was an influence from my parents,” he says, who emigrated to England from Sri Lanka in the 1970s, first living in Manchester before settling in Bearwood, Birmingham. “We were taught not to waste things. We didn’t have heaps of money. [...] My mum is an incredible cook, but again, Buddhist parents, so [frugality] was just part of our approach.”

“I think our parents wanted us to assimilate” he says. “It’s a common story of how a lot of immigrant parents think, well, ‘we’ll just make you very British.’ The culture we were actually closest to growing up was Chinese, because Birmingham had a big Chinese community.” As a result, he ate dim sum twice a week for “quite a long period of my life – that’s why it’s still my death row meal.”

As a teenager, he received an education in good spirits from raiding a school friend’s parents’ liquor cabinet for cognac. “He was a very prized surgeon but didn’t drink, so he had this cache of old cognac,” he says. “Barney and I used to play chess and drink this bottle of cognac, not knowing what it was”

He honed his craft as a bartender while studying in Edinburgh. When he came to found White Lyan, it was a runaway success. Beyoncé and Jay-Z took over the bar one night. Memorably, Björk offered to DJ on its first birthday, having spent an evening there with friends. The Lyan empire has expanded to include bars elsewhere in London, Super Lyan in Amsterdam, Silver Lyan in Washington DC, which this week picked up two PINs, and countless pop-ups. A Lyan location in New York has closed – for now.

That’s the other thing about Mr Lyan. He gets bored easily. As soon as he has made a bar a success, it’s on to the next. “It was a real moment of reflection to realise that not everybody thinks that way,” he says. “It feels logical that you’re like, ‘right, that’s done.’ With White Lyan, I was like, ‘it’s succeeded, if we keep it open it’s just arrogance’.”

He told the team at Dandelyan – his first bar in the space now occupied by Lyaness – that he planned to close it just days after it won World’s Best Bar in 2018. “I was really nonchalant about it. Some of them were crying and I was like, ‘S---t! I’ve been really insensitive! Everybody’s still got a job, we’re just doing something different.”

It is easy to see why. Lyaness is a luxurious experience in every sense of the word. There is that green marble bar, for starters, cut from one 20,000kg block. “They had to take the front of the building off to swing it in,” Chetiyawardana says. And then there is its situation – right on the South Bank, with a view of the river and St Paul’s Cathedral. The windows are lit on both sides, giving a clever impression of being right in the heart of the action but also insulated from it in a velvety bubble.

Lyaness won World's Best Bar in 2022 at the Spirited Awards
Lyaness won World’s Best Bar in 2022 at the Spirited Awards - Paul Grover

His current London locations are both in hotels – Lyaness in Sea Containers and Seed Library in One Hundred Shoreditch, east London. This is no accident. “I think hotel bars are magical,” he says. “There’s a sense of hospitality you can offer in a hotel that you can’t do in other spaces. And London has the best hotel bars in the world.”

Even though he presides over a high-end cocktail empire, Chetiyawardana insists he isn’t fussy. “If I go to a gig, I’m drinking a Jack and Coke, like, it’s what fits that context,” he says. “I’m not going to be super pretentious and want a perfectly made martini at a dive bar. Same as I’m not going to insult someone’s fine dining setup by ordering a bottle of Blue Nun.” There is one thing Chetiyawardana can’t abide: prosecco. “I have a bit of a vendetta against it,” he says. “It’s the one [thing] I am a snob about. It’s both too sweet and too acidic, it tastes like heartburn.”

At this point I’m offered Lyanasses’ take on a martini, which is made with Boatyard Vodka and a proprietary creamy, cloudy potato fermentation that, for reasons Chetiyawardana still can’t explain, tastes like vanilla. It would be rude to say no.

So, where does a world-beating bartender like to drink? He’s a fan of Bramble in Edinburgh, where he once worked. Further afield, his favourite country to visit is Japan, where he makes sure to stop at Bar High Five. “It’s just spectacular,” he says. “And the glassware is beautiful. You feel like if you sneeze you’ll break [it].” Special mention too goes to Caretaker’s Cottage in Melbourne, an understated bar housed in, you guessed it, an old caretaker’s cottage.

I later find out that “Mr Lyan” is a link to a childhood nickname. “It was simply kids rhyming Ryan and Lyan,” he says over email. “But it also allowed us to link all the projects together – a creative and branding [idea from] my sister.” The nickname, then, is like every other aspect of his cocktail empire – both a happy accident and entirely on purpose.