Sessions Arts Club
THE ART OF SEDUCTION
The seduction begins with the olde world charm of Clerkenwell Green. Ahead is the elegant late 18th Century Palladian-style courthouse where Charles Dickens worked as a junior reporter. It’s now home to Sessions Arts Club, known as being one of the most beautiful dining rooms in London.
Before we’re even inside it feels kind of exciting, with its side door entrance cast under the light of Victorian lanterns and having to press a buzzer for entry. Then, we’re into an antiquated lift that nudges us up to the 4th floor, before pushing through heavy velvet curtains into the main dining room. And wow.
Main dining room
Initially, most striking is its grandeur with a soaring double height ceiling and huge, restored ornate arches framing distressed and patched up walls. Next to register is the bar occupying the back wall under grandiose arch windows and the neat rows of white clothed tables with almost everyone dining as couples. And then the low-level, dancing light from gas fired crystal chandeliers and candles.
By the time the four of us are led upstairs to the mezzanine and shown to our table with semi-circle booth banquette, I know it’s going to be expensive. I find myself reaching into my pocket for my credit card. Not to check I’ve brought it; it’s a purely protective impulse, like reaching for your child’s hand when walking past a group of rowdy drunks.
Mezzanine
The menu is split between small and large plates and we’re advised it’s a sharing plates approach of ‘maybe six small and four large plates’ between us.
We’ve pretty much gone with one of everything of the small plates. Except we’ve been advised brown shrimp croquette is exactly that… a single croquette. We order two and it turns out half each is just a mouthful, but enough to appreciate they’re butter loaded and brown shrimp heavy.
Brown shrimp croquette
Paper-light ‘tattooed’ pane carasau—Sardinian flatbread—fulfils the role usually assigned to poppadoms, with it barely elevated by a smear of goat’s curd and ‘lovage’ which turns out to be mostly pea shoots.
Pane carasau, lovage & goat’s curd
Never mind, we’ve more interesting carbs with two sticks of crispy, ‘churro-style’ panisse, served with three ‘petals’ of grill-tinged onions holding a tiny puddle of an indeterminable green oil, on what seems to be a bed of a creamy onion sauce.
Panisse, Rose de Bretagne
‘Trout, pomelo and roe’ demonstrates the power of simple food combinations. It’s a layered disc of slices of cured trout, mingling amongst the sweet-grapefruit zing of pomelo and salinity from roe. It’s the one dish I wouldn’t have chosen but two forkfuls win me over.
Trout, pomelo & roe
The biggest tease of the small plates is ‘brown crab, agretti and chilli’. There’s a bump of white crab meat with a quiet hint of chilli, sitting on a bed of something like brown crab bechamel; whatever it is, it delivers a comforting hit of umami. The samphire-like agretti adds salty minerality, but where this dish really shines is the hidden layer of pangrattato for the type of crunch that almost feels like popping candy. Oh, for just an extra forkful or two.
Brown crab, agretti & chilli
The last of the small plates is a rustic mini-potato pave offering the right amount of crunch on its layers with slices of lightly smoked eel in the mix. A softly boiled egg cloaked in a verdant, peppery watercress sauce completes the plate’s full repertoire. It’s a classic four flavour combo but split four ways it’s just the one forkful and a scrape of the plate with the last bit of bread.
Eel, potato, egg & watercress
By now, we’ve racked up £82 on ‘small plates’ and I’m pretty sure that’s amounted to six forkfuls, half a chickpea ‘churro’ and a cracker’s worth of ‘flatbread’ each. It’s mostly delivered on textures and flavour, but feels like we’ve shared a menu of tasting dishes. We’d have been better advised to order less, but double up on that. It’s power of seduction is now on the wane.
We’ve already motored through a superb natural and organic Etna Bianco that’s full of minerality, with great body and a saline finish. We double up on that and also order a bottle of a lightly-sour red fruit forward, chilled Susacaru Etna Rosso to take us through phase two.
The arrival of the ‘large plates’ seems to mostly indicate bigger serving plates. At least this time, we’ve opted to choose one each—without the full sharing approach—plus an extra portion of bread for mopping.
Duck, beetroot, olive & tardivo
First to grab the attention is a blaze of purple, featuring bitter radicchio hiding medium rare duck breast, on top of a sweet, earthy beetroot puree. I get a tasting forkful and can’t make head nor tail of it and it’s confirmed as ‘completely odd’ by its owner. There are no complaints at all with the two plates of hake. It’s a work of art; glossy wild garlic leaves resembling patent leather wrapped around a perfectly cooked hake fillet.
Wild garlic, hake & crème fraîche
Mine’s a case of nearly but not quite. Pieces of meltingly tender and sweet pork are coated in a gorgeous, umami loaded sauce, but whilst the topping of gossamer thin marinda tomato slices look the part, they take away the expected pleasure of its firm flesh and cranks down the volume of its wonderful slightly tart and almost salty flavour. It also feels very much like a main without a side and that’s a view shared across the table with all the dishes.
Pork, anchovy & Marinda
There’s not much support for desserts, which is one part unsurprising given a general wariness of portion size and the other part surprising, given not one of us feels full. I feel at least the need to try one and so it is we end up with a triangular slice of almond cake. A dollop each of tart lemon curd and lightly whipped cream can’t hide that it’s not quite moist enough, but worse is the lack of bite on the crust.
Almond cake, lemon curd & cream
Our total bill is £470.35 between four (£196 booze / £213 food / service charge—a whopping 15%—£61.35) and with that, its power of seduction over me has gone. I’ve no qualms at all over spending money on eating out, but whilst the food has sometimes been very good, it’s also sometimes been unconvincing.
But, wow. It really is one of the most beautiful dining rooms in London and it throws into focus the role of the setting when dining out… certainly for a romantic or special occasion. Or even, as in our case, for a long overdue catch up with friends.
WORTH A TRY 6/10
24 Clerkenwell Green, London EC1R 0NA
