Lyaness: Where Cocktails Become Science

Lifestyle

There are cocktail bars, and then there's Lyaness. Perched inside Sea Containers on London's South Bank, this isn't somewhere you come to order a drink. It feels more like entering a glamorous version of Dexter’s Laboratory, where the cocktails are the finished experiments and the real magic has been happening behind the scenes.

It's been a minute since we last visited Sea Containers, so returning to this stretch of the Thames already felt long overdue. With the glistening city skyscrapers providing such a spectacular backdrop against the water, we settled in with the Lyaness team, who were every bit as warm as our surroundings. Our host, Christian, was a fountain of knowledge and genuinely welcoming, happily indulging our curiosity. This was very important, as the menu before us was anything but conventional.

At the heart of Lyaness is Ryan Chetiyawardana, better known as Mr Lyan, one of the most influential names in modern cocktail culture. His award-winning group has created some of the most celebrated bars, including Super Lyan and Silver Lyan in Washington, D.C., with a philosophy centred on sustainability, experimentation and challenging what a cocktail can be.

Not your average cocktail menu

We were here to experience the Collaboration Menu 2.0, Lyaness’s latest exploration of what happens when you stop thinking of a cocktail as simply a combination of spirits, mixers and garnish. The menu changes, and each of the cocktail scientists, as we prefer to call them, contributes to the research, development and curation of the recipes. We use the term deliberately because mixologist or bartender hardly seems to capture the level of science, testing, preparation and sheer imagination involved here.

Lyaness has always been a place for ideas as much as drinks;

Collaboration 2.0 takes that philosophy further. Rather than simply collaborating with other people, the team has opened itself up to different ways of thinking, taking an idea that sparks curiosity, breaking it down to understand how it works and rebuilding it in liquid form. It's part cocktail, part research project and part creative experiment.

The menu itself gives you a glimpse into this process. There's an ingredients pantry and a drinks map, helping to decode some of the unusual preparations that sit behind the cocktails. Among them are carrot salami, vegan honey, gourds fermented into kombucha and blue cheese Irish cream. Yes, you read that correctly.

These are what we call 'preparations', and they are really the backbone of the experience. Ingredients are not simply added to a shaker and forgotten. They are fermented, transformed, clarified, distilled, infused and reimagined before they ever reach your glass. The result is a drinks menu that feels almost edible in its imagination.

The Lyaness laboratory

What makes the experience particularly fascinating is knowing that so much of the work has already happened before the cocktail reaches you. It makes sense that Lyaness has become so celebrated within the cocktail world. There's an intellectual curiosity behind the drinks, but the team never loses sight of the fact that, ultimately, they need to be enjoyable. Innovation for innovation's sake would become exhausting. Here, the experimentation has a purpose.

Food and cocktails

We begin with English coastal oysters and four-cheese croquettes alongside the Pinnacle Point Fizz, a wonderfully refreshing combination built around Lyaness's nixtamalised blue corn preparation, ginger bitters, sour pineapple and soda water, finished with a sprig of fresh rosemary.

Nixtamalisation is a traditional process in which corn is treated to alter its texture and flavour, but here it becomes part of something completely unexpected. The drink is bright, gently spicy and beautifully lifted by the pineapple, while the rosemary adds an aromatic finish. Paired with the oysters, it works particularly well, cutting through their natural salinity, while the rich, molten croquettes provide the perfect counterpoint.

Next comes one of Christian's recommendations, the sea bass ceviche tacos paired with the Green Rayu Punch. The cocktail is a signature creation from The Light(er), and is also available alcohol-free, making it one of those drinks that manages to be inclusive without feeling like a compromise. Its foundation is Lyaness's Green Sauce Liqueur, a preparation inspired by the classic green sauces found in kitchens around the world. Herbs, mushrooms, fruits and peppercorns are brought together to create something deeply herbaceous with a little kick of savoury depth. The drink also contains Johnnie Walker Black Ruby whisky, a distinctive cashew-milk rayu and masa, which gives it an almost creamy texture and an intriguing nod towards Japanese flavours. It sounds like a lot on paper, but somehow it's not. Like a fragrance, the cocktail has a beginning, middle and finish. The first sip is fresh and aromatic, the centre becomes more savoury and rounded, and the soda water lifts everything at the end. It's surprisingly light, incredibly refreshing and a brilliant match for the bright, citrusy ceviche tacos.

And then we get to the drink that makes us fully understand why we have stopped calling these people mixologists. An Old Fashioned is a classic for a reason, but Lyaness has given it an entirely unexpected personality using its carrot salami preparation. We are even lucky enough to see the preparation before it goes into the drink, and have to admit, it looks exactly like a tiny, very bright orange salami stick.

The process is as extraordinary as the finished cocktail. Carrots undergo maceration in milk, are cured in salt and then left to mature after being pitched with Penicillium nalgiovense. Over time, a slow osmotic transformation takes place, turning the humble carrot into a rich, charcuterie-like cordial with a savoury sweetness and remarkable depth. In an Old Fashioned, it's completely unexpected. The drink retains the warmth and familiarity of the classic cocktail, but underneath is this wonderfully earthy, umami-rich character. Quite honestly, it is the best Old Fashioned we have ever tried.

To finish, we are treated to a bespoke serving of the Popcorn Buffalo Chicken with a glass of champagne. It's exactly the kind of playful, slightly eccentric combination that makes sense at Lyaness, where the boundaries between cocktail bar, kitchen and laboratory are deliberately blurred. By this point, the evening feels less like a conventional drinks tasting and more like being invited into someone's wonderfully strange culinary imagination.

The verdict

What can we say? This was a masterclass.

Lyaness manages to make serious research feel genuinely fun. There's an enormous amount of science, preparation and testing behind these drinks, but you never feel as though you are being given a lecture. Instead, you're encouraged to taste, question and be surprised. That's what makes the experience so memorable.

For more information, visit HERE

LYANESS

Located in: Sea Containers London

Address: 20 Upper Ground, London SE1 9PD

Imagery courtesy of Lyaness

Words by Jheanelle Feanny