Rating: 11/20
Telephone: 0141-812 9999
Address: Earl of Mar Estate, Bishopton, Renfrewshire
Price: Around £70 a head (inc wine)
Open: All week, dinner only, 7-10pm
Wheelchair access and disabled WC

With hindsight - the only vision I have that's 20/20 - the presence of the pianist in the hall didn't augur well. It wasn't just that he looked like a Stars In Their Eyes Kenny Rogers. Nor was it simply that his repertoire sounded as if it had been honed in a hotel lounge called, perhaps, the Terrace or the Palm Court (lowpoint: Bryan Adams' Everything I Do, I Do It For You). It wasn't even that he was a poor piano player - he wasn't at all. Rather, it was the cheesiness he embodied, juxtaposed with the cathedral proportions and otherwise hushed magnificence of the gothic-style pile that is Scotland's newest five-star country house hotel. In the Barry Manilow and Billy Joel standards, we should have heard alarm bells, a warning that all was not as it should be. But no.

Instead, we thought what's good enough for Kylie is good enough for us: Ms Minogue stayed here when she opened her Showgirl tour in Glasgow, and we have similar tastes, even if she has fewer feathers in her wardrobe than I. So, after a preprandial swally in the bar looking out over the Clyde - a sedate, rural river rather than Glasgow's (post) industrial artery - we proceeded to the dining room, our hopes as high as the vaulted ceilings.

It was here that the evening started to go wrong. Not that there was anything awry with the cheeky lobster bisque amuse bouche or with our starters. My black pudding, pancetta and asparagus salad was dandy, too, while the goats' cheese, tuna tartare and caviar salad of my dining companion Bryan (something of a celebrity round these parts) wasn't claggy at all. Moreover, we'd been impressed with the remarkably restrained mark-ups on the wine list (£25 for a petit chablis), though we could have done without the guide to champagne's many nicknames over the decades (now, apparently, it's known as "shampoo"). The staff were friendly without being overfamiliar and efficient without being militaristic.

The main problem - at this point, anyway - was the room itself: it had all the atmosphere of a mortuary without any of the allure. Despite being half-full - or possibly half-empty, given the Calvinist pessimism in the Scottish character (and I know, I've got one) - the place was joyless. For the other diners, it was as if the evening were an endurance test, not a gastronomic treat.

And perhaps it was. Certainly, the woman at the next table was sufficiently displeased when her main course turned up pink in the middle, and therefore "not cooked properly", that she sent it back. At the table next to her, the couple we'd earlier seen canoodling in the bar nipped out after their starter. We imagined a lovers' tiff, bickering bloomed into full-on argy-bargy. It transpired they'd gone for a fag break between courses, and possibly another helping of canoodle. They returned bearing drinks (a something and cola and a something and tonic) to enjoy with their meal.

Now, despite being a snob, I can't be faffed with pomp and pretension. I can manage, by myself, the tricky positioning of napkin upon lap. My appreciation of cloches quickly diminishes when they're removed and don't reveal either a clutch of white doves or a live rabbit, ideally one wearing a bow-tie. I don't even think you necessarily need to drink red wine with beef. I do, however, draw the line at Bacardi and Coke with halibut.

With such discerning customers, it is perhaps little wonder that chef Jim Kerr, formerly of One Devonshire Gardens and not of Simple Minds, appears to have given up on the detail. Detail such as the minted apricot creation that accompanied Bryan's pleasant pheasant and was dangerously close to jam. Detail such as the braised red cabbage, chaperone to my delicious venison, that was so sweet as to be inedible - it tasted as if it had been boiled in Kia-Ora and was a delicacy only for wannabe diabetics. Our side order of vegetables, meanwhile, appeared to have been wandering through Death Valley for a couple of days, and were as tasty as they appeared.

Ditto with dessert. The malt whisky parfait with prunes just mustered a "fine", while the cheese plate was the very definition of scraggy, bottom of the (cracker) barrel stuff. And when we thought it couldn't get any worse, the piano man packed up and what should come drifting through the air of the restaurant but Dido. Mustard gas would have been more welcome.

For the promotion to the same league as fine dining destinations such as Three Chimneys on Skye or Andrew Fairlie at Gleneagles, Mar Hall needs to up its game significantly. It's not just retail that's detail, and heavy-handed attempts at sophistication - whether tinkling in the hall or theatrical employment of cloches - need to be ditched in favour of genuine finesse. Or it can languish as yet another hotel restaurant with delusions of grandeur. As it is, Mar Hall is hitting too many bum notes.