Sketch, The Gallery

Sketch’s Gallery occupies the ground floor of a Georgian townhouse on Conduit Street, and it is the pink room that people go to see before they think about the food. Every surface is dressed in candy pink velvet, and the walls hold roughly two hundred original drawings by David Shrigley, whose deadpan cartoons and captions cover the space from skirting board to cornice. It runs afternoon tea by day and a modern European dinner service by night, with the famous egg-shaped loos tucked away for anyone who has not yet heard about them.

Afternoon tea is what most people book it for, with finger sandwiches, pastries and scones served on Shrigley-designed china, and it remains one of the more inventive takes on the ritual in London. The dinner menu draws on French technique with occasional detours elsewhere, and dishes built around good British and European produce tend to outperform the more elaborate plates. Portions are not generous for the price, which is the trade-off for the setting.

The room suits an occasion rather than a regular dinner out: a birthday, a visiting friend who wants a properly London afternoon tea, or anyone curious about one of the city’s more photographed interiors. It is not a place for a quick, cheap lunch, and the queue for the loos on a busy afternoon can be its own small event.

Sketch earns its reputation on design rather than on the plate, and that is fine as long as you go in with the right expectations. The tea is genuinely fun, the room is unlike anywhere else in Mayfair, and the food, while perfectly good, is not really the point. Book it for the spectacle.