Let's agree from the outset that it's not really cricket to review a restaurant on its opening night. That said, I wasn't the only critic despatched to Aungier Street last Friday week to check out Conrad Gallagher's new Dublin venture – the place was coming down with reviewers. Latterly, of course, Gallagher has been known more for his financial travails than his cooking. One tends to forget his two Peacock Alley Michelin stars when the more recent coverage of him has been all bankruptcy and chaotic disarray on a global scale. But we set out on our evening resolved not to be distracted by the sideshow and to assess whether Gallagher's new restaurant has any chance of cutting the mustard in a city that is very different to the one he departed almost a decade ago.

Salon des Saveurs could not by any stretch of the imagination be said to be situated in a prime location. This is not necessarily a problem, although it is certainly a challenge, but it does limit the possibilities for passing trade and means that Gallagher and his backers (various rumours are doing the rounds) have made the decision to stand or fall as a destination restaurant.

The interior has had a cheap-looking refit (perhaps it's ironic, the '90s vibe?) – it's dark and dated, with ugly bright red leather chairs. There is a truly dreadful enormous painting of some Great World Chefs. The room is cramped. The food is served on those awful rectangular plates.

There is a choice of four different five-course tasting menus, ranging in price from €24 to €54. We would have liked to have chosen one from each end of the scale, to allow for an exercise in compare and contrast, but everyone at the table has to order the same menu and so we opted for the €54 menu on the basis that it would be the one best to show off Gallagher's culinary skills. The price of the menu is doubled if you elect to order a 'tasting glass wine pairing' to accompany the menu – although, confusingly, there are six wines to go with five courses. As the lighting was dim and the print small, this was the easy way out and the option that we chose. Closer study of the menu back home shows wines available from €24 to €54 per bottle, or €6.50 to €14 by the glass.

We started with a couple of the smallest glasses of champagne we'd ever seen – pricey at €11 each. In fact, the wine servings all night were on the stingy side.

Our €54 menu commenced with asparagus soup, served in a tiny cup, with a Lilliputian garnish of serrano ham, calamari and shaved coconut. It was fine – a 'does what it says on the tin' dish that generated scant excitement. Next came oxtail and foie gras 'pain d'epices', with apricot, grape, fried baby spinach and hazelnut aioli. The oxtail was wrapped around a central core of foie gras and served cold – I found this quite unpleasant. I could feel my arteries clogging as I ate it with no pay-off in terms of flavour. We liked the spinach but the ginger-spiced bread could have sunk a battleship. Seared scallop 'remoulade' with celeriac, black truffle, watercress and parsley oil was the star of the night – as good as it sounds, perfectly executed. A shame that it was scallop singular rather than scallops. This was followed by muscovy duck breast – cumin-spiced cabbage with puy lentils, pumpkin, arbafura froth, apple and sunnyside-up quail egg. Again, the plate was fine without generating any excitement – and by this stage our concern about the portion sizes had manifested as full-blown fear of going home hungry. Three small slices of duck breast does not a main course make. (And no, I can't enlighten you about the arbafura – sorry. Haven't a clue.)

The Monte Carlo chocolate plate, by way of contrast to what had preceded it, was huge. We got brownies, a chocolate crème brulee, a chocolate, a soufflé and some lemon rice pudding. All good, bar the leaden soufflé and the rice pudding, but we would have preferred to have larger portions of the savoury courses and less in the way of pudding.

I said at the outset that we were not there to carp, and so I am inclined not to dwell on the long wait for our first course to arrive and the subsequent longeurs in service. It was funny rather than irritating that we were offered bread four times – including once when we had finished our pudding – but never managed to get any despite saying 'yes' each time. The wine service was poor, in that we had to chase the wines that were supposed to be paired with the food and watch our food go cold as we waited. When they did arrive, they did so more often than not without explanation or introduction and we had no way of knowing whether the wines that we got were the right ones.

These are all glitches that have probably been sorted out in the first week of business. More fundamentally, Salon des Saveurs is out of step with the zeitgeist. The curious are going to want to pay a visit, but I wonder will many return? The look and feel of the place are all wrong. We paid our bill (€243 including 12.5% service, but excluding the champagne for which we were not charged), made a call and headed to Town Bar & Grill in search of a hang sangwich.

Salon des Saveurs, 16 Aungier Street, Dublin 2, Tel: 01 4758840, Rating: 2/5