Lyaness

Electric blue walls and a long green marble bar are the first things you notice at Lyaness, a striking enough interior that it would draw attention even without Ryan Chetiyawardana’s reputation attached to it. Housed inside the Sea Containers hotel on the South Bank, this is Mr Lyan’s flagship bar, replacing the widely praised Dandelyan on the same site in 2019.

The cocktail list, called the Ancestral Cookbook, is organised around ingredients rather than spirit categories, five core components such as tree caramel or a house made everything vinegar running through a set of drinks built with genuine culinary technique rather than conventional bar shorthand. It rewards asking staff questions rather than simply picking a name off the menu.

Views over the Thames and the City skyline add another layer to an already considered space, and the bar has picked up serious international recognition over the years for both its drinks programme and its sustainability focused approach to sourcing and waste. A short food menu of snacks and small plates is available for anyone treating the visit as a proper evening out rather than a quick drink before dinner elsewhere.

Service is knowledgeable and unhurried, staff able to talk through the thinking behind a drink without turning it into a lecture, which matters given how conceptual some of the menu can read on the page compared with how approachable it actually tastes.

The honest caveat is price and the risk of feeling a little precious. Cocktails sit at the top end of what London bars charge, comfortably into the high teens, and a menu this focused on ingredient led storytelling can occasionally feel more like a tasting exercise than a relaxed night out. It suits drinkers who want to engage with what they are being served rather than those after a quick, familiar round, and on that narrower brief it delivers about as well as any bar in the city.