Seed Library
The Orkney Breezer comes filtered through a sheep's pancreas, and the Breakfast Bellini uses century beans, a twist on Japan's century eggs (Time Out).
Why go
Ryan Chetiyawardana built his reputation on concept menus, at White Lyan in 2013 and then at Dandelyan, and this bar is him taking that apparatus away. CLASS reported the thesis at launch: a lo-fi, analogue approach to bartending
, where the room delves into the origins and stories surrounding classic cocktails, delivering stripped-back takes on classics, featuring seasonal ingredients
(CLASS). The strangeness moved from the format into the ingredient, which is a harder place to put it.
You can read that in the builds. A gin and tonic served low-ball so perilla seed can push a green, nutty note against the quinine. A martini where szechuan leaf carries the floral spice. A daiquiri that hands rum's job to chive and coconut milk. The list turns over often, and two sources four years apart use the same word for it: CLASS called it short, frequently changing
in 2022, and Top 50 Cocktail Bars says now that the menu is frequently rotating
(Top 50 Cocktail Bars).
There is a programme on top of the list. For nine Sundays the bar ran a three-drink menu with the Rare Tea Company, and the venue explains the method rather than the branding: Sometimes that means fermentation, sometimes tea becomes the extraction medium, and other times, the tea is essentially the drink itself, with the spirit simply supporting it
(Seed Library). The kitchen does the same thing with guests, most recently a run with Ruben's Reubens.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Sancho Leaf Martini or the Perilla Gin and Tonic, the two drinks the bar opened with and still explains itself through. The Chive Daiquiri. White Lyan Magic Cheese from the snack list, which is a posh nacho dip with Japanese rice crackers and started life at Chetiyawardana's first Hoxton bar. Ask which drinks have alcohol-free builds, because most of the list does.
- Avoid: Mondays and Tuesdays, when it is shut. The Ballermaker, unless a bottle of Krug served with potato smiles is the kind of joke you want on your bill. It is the most expensive thing on the list by a distance.
What locals & experts say
- Leonie Cooper, Food & Drink Editor at Time Out London, July 2025, five stars out of five:
this basement adjunct to One Hundred Shoreditch is a relaxed, impressively low-lit and supremely welcoming space with terrazzo tables, cool pine panelling and soft 1960s stylings.
Her order-this line:There's nothing on Mr Lyan's menu that's going to be boring. A tequila-based Lada Lada with lager sizzurp? Sure! A gin-centric sipper containing lettuce that's just called Salad? Why not!
4 - Hamish Smith, CLASS Magazine, January 2022, quoting Chetiyawardana on why he built it:
The project is really exciting for us as it provides the opportunity to explore a totally different facet of our philosophy, giving a creative route for the team and I to really challenge ourselves and the Western approach to bartending, and to create a bar that is very much reflective of the spaces where we'd want to hang out.
3 - Top 50 Cocktail Bars, on the buying:
The bar's drinks, wines, beers and spirits reflect an ethos of carrying a maker's touch fingerprint and so the menu is frequently rotating.
5 - Chetan Sharma, chef-patron of BiBi (January 2025), who calls the Connaught the obvious answer for a London drink and then names this room as the one that impressed him recently:
They do a version of a michelada there that I completely fell in love with, and it is now probably my favorite drink in the world.
He gives the build as lager, mezcal, tequila and elderflower liqueur, and he clocks the room the same way:It feels like the basement of some New York executive in the 1970s,
which he reads assuper fun, a little disco, a little chic, stylish without trying too hard.
1 - The votes that sit elsewhere. Our chef-vote file holds one Mr Lyan pick and it is for Lyaness, a different bar in the same group, so it stays there. Chetiyawardana himself appears on this site as the voice who named Hacha's margarita the best in London, which is a pick about somebody else's bar and the only kind that counts.
Good to know
- Where: the basement of One Hundred Shoreditch, 100 Shoreditch High Street E1 6JQ. Shoreditch High Street or Liverpool Street.
- Timing: the venue lists closed Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 6pm to 1am, Friday and Saturday 5pm to 2am, Sunday 5pm to midnight. Time Out and CLASS both print Wednesday to Sunday 5pm to 1am, so the venue's own page is the one to trust and the older figure is still circulating.
- Booking: walk-ins are genuinely encouraged. Tables up to 15 book online through SevenRooms; larger parties go by phone.
- Door: over 18s only, stated by the venue.
- Music: Love Vinyl, from East London, play records at weekends.
- Also served: low-intervention wines, craft beer, cider, sake, coffee, tea and miso soup, plus a food menu of sharing snacks and guest dishes from East London collaborators.
- Hygiene: the bar has no FSA registration of its own. The record covering the building is One Hundred Shoreditch, rating 5, Hackney, inspected 14 November 2024, FHRSID 1845133, components 0/5/5. A second registration at the same address belongs to Sticks'n'Sushi and is a different tenant.6
- Group: Mr Lyan also runs Lyaness on the South Bank, and there is a Seed Library in New York. A review of either is about that room, not this one.
Verdict
should-visit — Worth the detour, and go on a Sunday if the residency is running. Seed Library is Ryan Chetiyawardana stripping his own format back: no concept menu, just classics taken apart and rebuilt through one strange ingredient at a time. A gin and tonic comes in a low-ball where perilla seed pushes green and nutty against the quinine. A martini carried by szechuan leaf. One drink is a Breezer filtered through a sheep's pancreas. Two sources four years apart describe the list as frequently changing, and the room runs a real programme on top of it: nine Sundays with the Rare Tea Company where tea is fermented, used as an extraction medium, or simply is the drink. Time Out's Food and Drink Editor gave it five stars and called the room supremely welcoming, which for a hotel basement is the whole trick. It holds at should-visit rather than higher because the awards column is empty, it is absent from the World's 50 Best Bars top 50 in both 2024 and 2025, and the strongest verdict on file is a single five-star listing review rather than a body of criticism.