Episode 254

Meet Mr. Lyan with Ryan Chetiyawardana

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Meet Mr. Lyan with Ryan Chetiyawardana

Episode 254

What’s shakin’ cocktail fans? Welcome to Episode 254 of The Modern Bar Cart Podcast!

This time around, we’re joined by Ryan Chetiyawardana (@mrlyan on Instagram). He’s the bar owner, author, creativity guru, and proud former barback responsible for some of the most innovative bar programs in the world, including the Lyan portfolio, with locations on multiple continents and Seed Library in East London. You may also know him from his recent cocktail Masterclass, which he created in tandem with Speedrack co-founder Lynette Marrero, his book, Good Things to Drink with Mr. Lyan and Friends, or his numerous drinks industry awards with titles like “World’s Best Bar,” “Spirits Communicator of the Year,” and “International Bartender of the Year.”

In this conversation with drinks entrepreneur and educator Ryan Chetiyawardana, some of the topics we discuss include:

The origin story of the name “Mr. Lyan” and how Ryan’s family relationships with movers and shakers in the design and fashion world influenced the wide scope and inclusive lens of his bar projects.
Ryan’s framework for creativity and drink creation, which incorporates input at all levels of the bar team and thrives on the diversity of experience and passion of bar managers, bartenders, and even barbacks.
How the question of privilege in the cocktail world has led Ryan to explore everything from eliminating ice from his bar program, to using the “less desirable” cuts of citrus, to exploring the role of sea level rise in a recent bar menu.
We also explore how he thinks about cocktail education, including his recent cocktail Masterclass with Lynette Marrero and the one key teaching about balance that might just cause you to rethink the way you approach drink design.
Along the way, we gloss over a few other boring little details, like how to use moon rocks as gin botanicals, the decimal point that launched a thousand spinach enterprises, where to grab a drink with David Bowie in London, and much, much more.

You can learn more about Ryan and his projects by visiting MrLyan.com.

Featured Cocktail: The Mexican Firing Squad

This episode’s featured cocktail is The Mexican Firing Squad. To make it, you’ll need:

2 ounces tequila
3/4 ounce lime juice
3/4 ounce grenadine
5 dashes Angostura bitters

Combine these ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice, give em’ a good, hard shake until the contents are chilled and properly diluted, then strain into a rocks glass over ice, garnish with a lime wheel, and enjoy.

First published in Charles H. Baker’s book, titled, The Gentleman’s Companion, Or, Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask, this cocktail was said to have been discovered in Mexico City in 1937 and is ostensibly a daisy variant that skews less sweet and more sour than most, but benefits from the rosy hue of grenadine and the herbal complexity of angostura bitters.

We wanted to feature this cocktail because we think it shines a beautiful light on the creative process of Ryan and his team. They’ve served a version of it at Dandelyan called the Mexican Firing Squad 2.0. This rendition keeps the tequila and lime juice, but swaps out the Angostura bitters for a combo of mole bitters and chili liqueur and then employs an agar gel clarification technique – something out of reach for most home bartenders – to create a tomato grenadine.

And hopefully as you listen to our conversation, you’ll almost be able to envision how this creative process went. Baker’s books are known for being extremely colorful – filled with the kinds of bizarre details and fanciful stories that fuel Ryan’s creative framework. So, he’s in this bizarre book, he comes across this somewhat lopsided tequila daisy recipe, and says, “how can we have fun with this drink?” Mole bitters and Ancho Reyes were popular at the time, so they’re logical choices, but how can he get in there and mess with the notion of grenadine?

Unfortunately, we can only speculate about the conversations and experiments that led to the Mexican Firing Squad 2.0, so we can’t tell you where the notion of a “tomato grenadine” came from, but it’s safe to say that it both preserved the visual identity of the cocktail as a rosy-hued daisy on the rocks while simultaneously advancing the conversation about savory preparations with trademark playfulness and whimsy.

This episode was made possible with editing and sound design by Samantha Reed and cocktail and bar insights courtesy of Mr. Lyan – Ryan Chetiyawardana.. This

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Meet Mr. Lyan with Ryan Chetiyawardana

Featured Cocktail: The Mexican Firing Squad

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