Watching an upscale restaurant mini-chain try to break out of its upscale hotel maxi-chain environs is like watching a Texas politician trying to rally the masses in broken Spanish: while on some level you have to admire the effort, it’s sometimes hard not to wince at the bumbling execution.

The kitchen, like everything else here, has ambition but exercises it without grace. Once, an amuse-bouche of mushroom consommé was overwhelmed by parsley. The sushi bar hawks some truly exotic—and truly expensive—pieces of fish, but they fall flat. O-toro, for example, the fattiest of the fatty tuna, tips the monetary scales at $13 for two pieces, but was disappointingly stringy at a recent visit. Even worse was fishy chu-toro, a less fatty stomach cut, but one that still should be meltingly tender. Finn & Porter further cheapens the deal by offering such silly rolls as “Texas Cowboy,” with asparagus, paprika, and filet mignon.

Amongst the main courses, crab cakes, though meaty, are humdrum and not really the focus here; their corn relish and mustard sauce are a bit out of place. A New York strip is stodgy. A dessert of pumpkin cheesecake with chocolate sauce is better, and quite decadent. The wine list is full of tumid and overpriced wines; if you do find one that is affordable, you’ll have a hard time feeling triumphant.

So bizarre is Finn and Porter’s décor that the attentive, deferential waitstaff seems almost lost in the stark glare of hanging lights that criss-cross the middle reaches of the soaring, two-story dining room. Metallic cords stripe the air like a network of circus tightropes—or the personal-rocket runways that 1950s sci-fi writers imagined would grace the 21st-century skies. Meanwhile, disturbingly bright color panels, monolithic columns in woodsy shades of brown and yellow, and translucent urns feel like the apocalyptic remains of a Frank Lloyd Wright house sacked by aliens. The crowd, too, is often a strange mix of clueless hotel guests and weekend warriors.

At easily $100 a head, this restaurant leaves us scratching ours.