Renowned bar owner Ryan Chetiyawardana (aka Mr Lyan) has opened the doors to his new Lyaness venue at Sea Containers London.
The new, eagerly awaited cocktail bar launched on March 29, and has replaced Ryan’s award-winning establishment, Dandelyan.
Showcasing a “daring” new offering that features a menu of seven ingredients instead of a traditional cocktail menu, Lyaness aims to empower guests in their choices and tastes through a playful approach to the drinking experience.
Guests can choose from the list of familiar ingredients manipulated into unfamiliar and exciting forms in order to create a bespoke cocktail.
One such ingredient, or flavour, is the Infinite Banana, an alternative to the ‘fake’ banana taste, created through a range of different techniques from parallel fermentation to precision use of different parts of everyday bananas.
The focus on ingredients reflects the way that chefs and restauranteurs have, in recent years, shaped their concepts around produce, putting this at the heart of the dining experience.
Ryan said: “When we opened Dandelyan four years ago, it had a genuine relevance to what was happening in the industry and succeeded in shaping a movement towards sustainable drinking across London.
“Lyaness acts as an evolution of this legacy and has been born out of the desire to promote change as a positive approach and start afresh with a dynamic new approach.
“We’ve chosen to move away from the traditional cocktail menu and instead focus on seven common ingredients that have an element of familiarity to most people, allowing guests to really engage in their drinking choices and inject a whole new level of participation and fun into the experience of drinking and choosing cocktails.”
The design of the space, reimagined by Lore Studio, emphasises two important features: the theatre of the bar and its views across the Thames and the city of London.
Lyaness’ colour palette sees a mixture of pale blues and soft greys used in the lounge furniture and seating areas, echoing the 1920’s, with a hint of 70’s retro.
Other key features include blue and bronze mirrored tables, a deep-tufted banquette, which sits upon a stage with octagonal mirrored lighting, and a sweeping green marble bar.
Some familiar features of the bar’s predecessor will be kept in the space – namely the sweeping green marble bar.
