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Ryan Chetiyawardana
Founder/bar creator behind Lyaness
- Discipline
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i. Biography
Ryan Chetiyawardana’s bar work is built from more than drinks technique. Fine Arts, biology and philosophy at Edinburgh University sit behind a practice that treats the bar as a place for observation, testing and framing. In the glass, that shows up as structure; in the room, as atmosphere; in the service, as a set of questions about how a guest is received. Contemporary hospitality, in this practice, is treated as a discipline with several moving parts: drink, design, welcome, memory, pace and mood. Chetiyawardana’s projects are discussed for cocktails, but the more durable signature is the method behind them — an insistence that a bar can carry ideas without losing ease, and that precision should still arrive at the guest as generosity.
Coming Up
Training across Birmingham Food College, Edinburgh University, and Central Saint Martins gave the work its mixed register: practical hospitality and technique, cross-disciplinary study in Fine Arts, biology and philosophy, and design thinking. In Chetiyawardana’s case, that combination supported a bar practice that does not treat format as fixed. The room, the menu, the service model and the drink can all be reconsidered as part of the same build. London gave that method a public test with White Lyan in London, where Chetiyawardana emerged as bartender / founder from 2013. White Lyan in London became an early marker for stripping back assumptions around how drinks are made, served and understood. The point was not novelty as display, but reduction as a working method: remove inherited rules, then decide what still earns its place on the counter. The language expanded through Dandelyan in London and Cub, where Chetiyawardana was owner. Those projects positioned the bar less as a single service station and more as a complete system: drinks, room, narrative and intent operating together. Dandelyan in London and Cub each carried their own grammar, with the drink functioning as one element inside a broader hospitality structure. Current roles across Lyaness, Super Lyan, Silver Lyan, and Seed Library (since 2025) keep that system-based approach active. As founder / bar creator of Lyaness, operator / bar creator of Super Lyan, operator / bar creator of Silver Lyan, and operator / bar creator of Seed Library, Ryan Chetiyawardana continues to work in the space between concept and service: ideas built carefully enough to hold, then delivered in rooms guests can actually use.
Where They Are Now
Lyaness in London, UK is the current base for Chetiyawardana as founder/bar creator. The role combines authorship with execution: concept, detail, sequence and service all have to meet in the room. Lyaness in London, UK belongs to the wider Lyan line of work, where drinking is treated as part of a complete encounter rather than an isolated product. International operation extends the same bar language through Super Lyan in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and Silver Lyan in Washington, DC, USA. In both cities, Chetiyawardana’s operator role keeps the work focused on bars that can be considered without becoming closed, and designed without becoming brittle. The craft is in making a built idea feel easy to enter. Process also sits outside the bar through Mr Lyan Studio and through teaching as a Masterclass instructor for Masterclass. Those roles make the working method more explicit: not only finished drinks and rooms, but frameworks that can be shared, questioned and adapted. Mr Lyan Studio carries the creative practice beyond service; Masterclass places the approach in an instructional setting. The operating principle is stated plainly: "It’s not about the taste and the drinks, it’s about everything else." For a bartender, that does not demote the drink. It locates it inside the full craft of hospitality — timing, welcome, gesture, room, conversation and the managed ease of a night that feels unforced because the structure has been worked through.
Honors
Ryan Chetiyawardana has received The World's 50 Best Bars — World's Best Bar (2018). Recognition has come in trade terms as well as public ones: World's Best Bar Team (2017), World's Best Bar (2017), 40 under 40 Tastemakers (2020), 10 years of outstanding achievement (2020), Person of the Decade (2020), and Top 100 Modern Britons (2019). For Ryan Chetiyawardana, those honors mark not only individual bars, but a body of work that has pushed contemporary drinking culture toward looser rules, broader hospitality, and more deliberate room-making.
Profile updated July 2026
FAQ
Asked of Ryan
What is Ryan Chetiyawardana's current role?
Ryan Chetiyawardana is Founder/Bar creator Behind Lyaness.
Where did Ryan Chetiyawardana train or study?
Ryan Chetiyawardana trained at Birmingham Food College and Edinburgh University.
What recognition has Ryan Chetiyawardana received?
World's Best Bar Team (2017).
