Sessions Arts Club

Sessions Arts Club occupies the old judges' dining room on the fourth floor of the Old Sessions House, the Grade II* listed courthouse built on Clerkenwell Green in 1782 for the Justices of Middlesex. The room was largely left as it was found. Plaster is stripped back to green and rose distemper, Corinthian capitals and cornices sit above bare boards, and two marble fireplaces stand in the arched bays. Paintings are hung straight onto the ruined walls and change with the programme, and a sculpture of crossed silver legs hangs over the floor.

It opened in August 2021, the work of Cabin Studios and Satila Studios with Jon Spiteri, and runs as a restaurant, bar and gallery at once. Abigail Hill cooks a short Mediterranean menu; the wine list is built to sit alongside it. A mezzanine looks down over the dining room, and terraces with open fires wrap around it, leading to a rooftop bar and a small garden.

There are no smaller private dining rooms here, so the venue is hired in one piece: a buyout takes in the dining room, the Gallery and both terraces. It seats 60 across three long tables of 20, or 100 standing. Evening hire runs to 11pm, later on Fridays and Saturdays, and the venue's own hire terms permit live music or a DJ until 11pm. This is a candlelit room rather than a late-night one, and it rewards a set played to that register.