Award-winning London bar Dandelyan is to close after four years to be replaced with something ‘more fitting’, its owner Ryan Chetiyawardana, also known as Mr Lyan, has announced today.
The bar at the Mondrian London hotel on the South Bank was rated number two in last year’s World’s 50 Best Bars, and has won a clutch of trophies at the global Spirited Awards at the Tales of the Cocktail festival, including world’s best bar.
Chetiyawardana opened Dandelyan with business manager Iain Griffiths in 2014 after scoring a success with their bar White Lyan the year before at a site in Hoxton, now home to restaurant Cub and bar Super Lyan.
Chetiyawardana made an announcement via Instagram to firstly celebrate the fourth birthday of the London-based bar, but also to say that it is going to close.
The anouncement read: “It feels fitting that on our fourth birthday to kill off our now oldest venue. The idea for Dandelyan is way older than four – it has roots in White Lyan and my old biology days.
“It would be a disservice to these amazing people (Dandelyan’s bar staff) to continue when we think the landscape, and the conversation, has shifted. There’s so much I think we can do, and so much we want to challenge, discuss and create in the industry that, like with White Lyan, it makes sense to burn it down, start afresh, and rise again as something brighter, shinier and more fitting of where we’re (all) now at.”
Chetiyawardana also owns London-based venues Super Lyan and Cub and within his social media post he also said that he will keep the Dandelyan space for a new venue.
“I wasn’t joking when I said we have a lot on. I really think we’re just hitting our stride, and now it’s time to pull out the real weird stuff.”