Le Mont at Urbis, Manchester

Tracey MacLeod is stifled by the fine dining and fatuous Franglais of Le Mont, the glitzy rooftop restaurant at Manchester's new Urbis museum of city life

Manchester is changing, or so we keep being told. The success of last year's Commonwealth Games has put a new spring in the city's step and there's a new set of landmarks on the tourist map, from Daniel Libeskind's Imperial War Museum to a shiny new branch of Selfridges. Hell, even Coronation Street is getting good again.

But the most visible symbol of inner-city regeneration is Urbis, a £30m "museum of city life" housed in an extraordinary wedge of staggered glass on the site of the 1996 IRA bomb blast. Urbis opened in July, and is already surpassing its visitor targets, though most of those visitors don't make it up to Le Mont, which occupies the building's top two floors, and, at around £50 a head, is probably central Manchester's most expensive restaurant. It's certainly the highest.

Anyone arriving at Le Mont expecting some of that famous Northern hospitality is in for a shock. Only after a stern lady with a clipboard has ticked off your name on her list are you allowed into the lift which speeds you to the building's upper reaches. Still, it's reassuring to know that you'd be in no danger should a mob rampage through the museum, enraged by an audio-visual presentation on the history of the cotton loom.

Le Mont has two dining rooms, both with floor-to-ceiling curving glass windows. But only the smokers upstairs get the panoramic views of the city; downstairs the prospect is baffled by white strips threaded into the building's glass skin, like filaments on an electric hob. "Great view!" I small-talked as I was seated, even though I couldn't really see much. "Not as good as Newcastle," my waiter replied. So much for civic pride.

In keeping with the mountainous theme of its name, Le Mont goes in for things on a giant scale. Each table is the size of a private dining room, and you need an extra arm to manage the menus. The wine list should really come with its own Sherpa.

This is no place to come with a hangover. Decked in shades of cream and polished limestone, the room's reflective surfaces sparkle blindingly when the sun comes out. ("Soak it up, it won't last," observed my gloomy lunch guest, who recently moved to Manchester and has so far remained immune to its charms.)

The food is described as "Modern French cuisine with a Manchester influence," and much of the meat is sourced locally – chicken from the Derbyshire Dales, pork from Peter Gott in Cumbria, and so on. But it's hard to warm to a menu which introduces each dish in laborious French (eg "râble de lièvre rôti et son ragoût de cuisse sur croûte, sauce grand veneur") with an apologetic English translation. Who, besides Fabien Barthez and his French team-mates, is this meant to appeal to?

Still, apart from its name – "potage Yehudi Menuhin" – there was nothing too pretentious about my starter, a finely tuned chicken and veg soup finished with garlic mayonnaise, a signature dish of Le Mont's executive chef Robert Kisby. And my guest's ravioli were positively hearty, each pasta parcel as pallid and doughy as a Rusholme chip-eater, and containing a whole scallop in a blanket of mushroom purée.

The menu waxes so enthusiastic about its specialist beef and lamb that it seemed churlish not to try some. Prime rib steak, already a monstrous slab for which the word "beefy" seemed inadequate, came with a parcel of boeuf bourguignon wrapped in Savoy cabbage. However happy Chef might be with his beef supplier, this turf-and-turf combination seemed superfluous. And though the steak delivered a good, authentic flavour, both it and the stew had a dry, dusty finish which didn't live up to the meat's adulatory billing on the menu.

The deadening politeness of fine dining hung over my own main course – two Dover sole fillets arranged into circles and piped full of a lobster mousse. Further gentility was on hand in the form of tiny mini veg and new potatoes cut into the shape of button mushrooms. "Why am I sitting in a bold, modern building, eating potatoes cut into the shape of button mushrooms?" I wanted to shout.

Le Mont seems pulled in two directions; it wants to be confident and contemporary – the staff are young and relatively informal, and the menu essays light-hearted touches, like the gigot d'agneau "Lancashire Hot Pot". But that lightness of touch is stifled by the ponderous wielding of fancy haute-cuisine touches, like the endless, bum-numbing business with side tables and tureens, and the daft Franglais of the menu. "Les viandes de Fellbred", indeed.

Puddings – particularly a toothsome quartet of raspberry desserts – give the best indication of the talent that's harnessed in the kitchen, and the restaurant Le Mont could be, if it wasn't trying to be all things to all Mancs. It should ditch the French, simplify the menu, and, in the words of Manchester's most famous sons, the Gallaghers, Be Here Now. But then, the Gallaghers don't live in Manchester any more. E

Le Mont at Urbis, Cathedral Gardens, Manchester (0161 6058282)