Sessions Arts Club

Sessions Arts Club sits on the top floor of the former Clerkenwell courthouse, up a staircase you would not find unless you knew. The building’s previous life as a courthouse is still legible in the proportions of the space, and the restaurant has clearly chosen to work with that grandeur rather than disguise it behind a more conventional restaurant fit-out.

A review of the dining here has to reckon with the room first — the 5-star rating follows only once the kitchen has proven it can match it.

The Room

Twenty tables in white linen, dark wooden chairs, brass lamps, and rotating contemporary art on the walls. Best at 13:00 in winter, when the light through the tall windows does most of the work — the room was clearly designed with that specific quality of daylight in mind, and visiting at any other hour means missing part of what makes the space distinctive.

The rotating art means no two visits look quite the same, even for a regular who’s booked the same window table repeatedly. The building’s former life as Clerkenwell’s magistrates’ court gives the whole top floor a genuinely grand, high-ceilinged scale that a purpose-built restaurant of this size would rarely attempt, and the restaurant has clearly chosen to work with those proportions rather than break the room up into something more conventionally intimate.

Twenty tables in a space this large means service never feels cramped, and the walk up the hidden staircase to reach it only adds to the sense of arriving somewhere genuinely set apart from the street below.

What to Order

The fish is the safest recommendation. Pasta is built for sharing across four, and ordering it that way rather than as an individual course is very much the intended approach. The fig tart is one of the best puddings in London, and worth planning the rest of the meal around leaving room for.

Florence Knight’s menu leans Italian without being strictly Italian, and that flexibility shows in how confidently a British fish course can sit alongside a genuinely Italian pasta dish on the same table without either feeling out of place. Champagne by the glass is a genuinely sensible way to open a lunch here, matching the room’s own occasion-worthy character better than a heavier red would at the start of a long meal.

The Drinks List

Italian-leaning, with an unusually deep run of Champagne and English sparkling — a combination that suits both the room’s occasion-worthy atmosphere and the kitchen’s own Italian leanings. The by-the-glass list changes with enough regularity that asking the sommelier for a direct recommendation tends to produce a more interesting pour than working through the printed list unassisted, particularly for anyone unfamiliar with the English sparkling producers featured.

The rotating contemporary art on the walls is sourced through a genuine gallery partnership rather than treated as decorative filler, and diners who ask are usually happy to be told a little about whichever artist is currently on show — a small extra layer that fits a room already built around the idea of arriving somewhere unexpectedly grand.

What You Will Pay

Around £180 for two, including a shared starter, fish course, dessert, a bottle, and service, a serious number but one that reflects a genuinely considered wine list and a kitchen working at real capacity.

The Verdict

A London pilgrimage lunch. Book a month ahead and take the 13:00 window seat in December, when the low winter light through the courthouse’s tall windows is doing the most work it possibly can.

What’s Being Said

The staircase alone filters out anyone who hasn’t been told where to look — which is exactly the kind of room this is, rewarding those willing to seek it out rather than advertising itself to passing footfall on Clerkenwell Green. Florence Knight’s cooking here is confident enough to let the building’s own history carry a good deal of the atmosphere, rather than fighting it with an over-designed dining room laid on top.

It would have been easy, in a space this architecturally distinctive, to let the room do most of the talking and serve competent but unremarkable food alongside it; instead the kitchen has matched the ambition of the setting course for course, which is why the restaurant has become a genuine destination rather than simply a striking backdrop for an average meal.