40 Hope Street, Liverpool (0151 705 2222). Meal for two, including wine and service: £120

I went for a dinner in Liverpool and suddenly it was the late 90s all over again. Really: when it's 8pm in London it's 1998 at the London Carriage Works. Of course this is not necessarily a bad thing. The restaurant sector is more prone to the caprices of fashion than most, and who's to say one trend is better than any other? Today it's all ramen joints and dirty burger bars. A few years from now we may look back on that and go: "Ah, bless." Which is, for the most part, my response to this cornerstone of Liverpool's restaurant scene, the dining room of a hotel. It's a snapshot of the self when young.

There is the glossy makeover of the warehouse space. So it's wood floors, bare-brick walls and a "design feature" of huge floor-to-ceiling shards of frosted glass – but not very many of them. It's as if they were trying to build Superman's Fortress of Solitude but ran out of dosh. Naturally, some of the food comes on offcuts of those glass shards. Quite a lot comes on ridged black tiles, which are a pain for the waiters and no fun to eat off. I think it's called the "wow factor".

Then there are the descriptions of the food that goes on those slates. Gosh, but they're exhausting. Thank heavens I was sitting down. Every ingredient ever thought of seems to be listed. So a summer Provence vegetable pithivier (or a veggie pasty, as they'd call it at Gregg's) reads: "Aubergine, courgettes, red and yellow capsicums and tomatoes, spinach, pecorino, shallots and Aura potatoes with whole-grain mustard cream sauce". Thanks for telling me the colour of the peppers. It's the kind of place where they tell you the soup is "freshly made". There's also an awful lot of scenting, as if this is less restaurant than tart's boudoir. There's a "thyme-scented sirloin". There's a "tarragon-scented cream sauce" with the pasta.

The rabbit starter is both "scented with sage and served with truffle-scented field mushrooms". In case there's any doubt, "truffle scented" means, "We hosed it down with truffle oil." You remember the truffle-oil days, don't you? As I say: "ah" and "bless". The rabbit dish sums up the real problem. While the London Carriage Works makes a lot of noise about the sourcing of its ingredients, it seems incapable of leaving them alone. Sauces are just that little bit over-reduced, dishes overseasoned. There is not much rabbit and an awful lot of truffle oil. A sensitively cooked scallop sits alongside a dense bit of braised pig cheek, overcooked slices of morcilla and a dribble of something so dark and sticky it looks like varnish for the black slate it's splattered across. A dish of pigeon with a beetroot and horseradish risotto is better, perhaps for being served in a bowl.

Far less impressive is a main course of seared mullet on a dry, oversalted and vast pillow of risotto spun through with peas. The risotto has to be dry to keep its shape because it's on one of those bloody slates. There's a reason bowls were invented. They have dips in them. Both a roast duck and a roast lamb dish turn up with baby-food smears of carrot purée and many other things besides. It is intensely self-conscious food. At between £7 and £12.50 for a starter and north of £20 for a main course, the pricing can only be described as enthusiastic.

And because it is 1998, an otherwise good crème brûlée is unbalanced by being pelted with apricots and stem ginger. A glazed white chocolate and orange bread and butter "terrine" turns up as a pressed slab of sweetened carbs.

Service deserves a mention for being charming, efficient and unobtrusive right up to the point when they start re-laying tables around us for next morning's breakfast service. Well, it is a hotel.

In short, dinner at the London Carriage Works is a very old-fashioned version of modern. I know what some people will say: that this is a nasty, sneering and patronising review. I'm minded to reply with: "How clever of you to notice." Instead I'll say this. When the bill for two easily breaks the ton, there is a simple expectation of better.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1