ingredients slayer lyaness alex lawrence

Golden South Sea Pearldiver

New menu 'game-changer' for Lyaness

25 October, 2019

The new menu at London’s Lyaness is the most significant launch since the bar re-opened in 2018, according to Mr Lyan global bar director Alex Lawrence.

The 21-drinnk menu launched on Monday 21 October and is called Ingredient Slayer. It is a similar concept to the first Lyaness menu, only with an additional four core ingredients including Golden Levain, Lyaness Tea-mooth, Vegan Honey and Peach Emoji.

These new additions have joined Infinite Banana, Purple Pineapple and Onyx to complete a set of seven core ingredients, which each have three suggested serves on new menu.

“I really think Ingredient Slayer is important because it gives us a chance to show what Lyaness is all about and the true creativity going on at the bar,” Lawrence told DI.

“It’s also nice to release a menu without people asking why we closed Dandelyan. But what really excites me is its simplicity.

“The ingredients are what we’ve put all of our time and work into and the suggested serves came quite naturally. But what’s important is that people should feel comfortable ordering from the menu because it’s designed to be simple.”

According to Lawrence, the menu should encourage people to be more adventurous with their choices because they can still order their favourite drink, but maybe with a twist using one of their seven ingredients. 

“The suggested serves are just suggestions - you don’t have to follow them and we want people to enjoy the ingredients in their own way,” he added.

ingredients slayer lyaness alex lawrence

Piña Leaf Highball

“Concept menus have now become common in bars, but it’s important to recognise that they’ve also become complicated. We’re trying to use language which is easy to follow. Nobody cares that with the Vegan Honey we’ve copied the enzymatic process used in a bee’s stomach to make essentially a honey copy, but if they ask about it then we won’t hide the information either.”

Vegan Honey is made using the bar team’s own inverted sugar syrups based on the flavour profiles of different honeys blended together. Peach Emoji meanwhile takes every part of a peach including the stone, skin and flesh and processes it in different ways to create what Lyaness describes as a “more full-bodied, complex” peach flavour.

Lyaness Tea-mooth was made in collaboration with Henrietta Lovell from Rare Tea Company to make a vermouth-style liquid made entirely out of tea and Golden Levain on the other hand is an ingredient which aims to bring forward the flavour of yeast through the use of sourdough, miso and sake kasu.

Ingredient Slayer is also the first Lyaness menu to have tasters available of the seven ingredients at a price point. 

“It’s not because we’re trying to bring in extra revenue,” said Lawrence. “But because some of them take weeks to prepare and so we feel they should be treated with respect. In a restaurant you wouldn’t be given free samples because they have a level of respect, so we’re applying this thinking to our ingredients because they deserve this respect.”





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