Why are the websites of independent restaurants invariably so mediocre? They are often scant, unreliable and, in some cases, non-existent. These days, though, it seems like commercial suicide for a restaurateur to skimp on their establishment’s online presence. It makes it seem as if they are trying to hide something or are so unenthused by what they offer that they can't even be bothered engaging a 19-year-old named Kevvo to come round and set the thing up.

The guilty parties always tend to be the same restaurateurs who clog their tables with place mats featuring Constable paintings, old grandparent-legacy cutlery and cards inviting you to dispatch your opinions on their place to the nearest brochure-issuing tourism quango. Websites are useless to them because their clientele still can’t work out why computers don’t show that test card featuring the little girl playing noughts and crosses.

Websites are also antithetical to the great wishbone-cracking dream of all foodies: the tiny, darling little bistro with heavenly food and a reputation spread solely by the word of mouth of those and such as those; the Brigadoon bistro. In this realm, a website is a species of advertising and bistros that advertise are trying too hard.

More annoying still, though, are sites set up in an early flush of positive thinking, with ticker-tape updates and ambitious menus, long before it’s discovered that the staff have strenuous social lives and often forget to order in even the milk and bread.

Firebird seemed a bit like that, I was sorry to discover. The website promised bounty and benison; honey and mustard marinated lamb rump, tagliatelle with slow-braised rabbit ragu, duck breast in quince glaze. Few of these things, however, were evident on the menu they give you when you get there.

There was an outbreak of apathy among the ingredients: some hadn’t turned up or had gone home early, while others such as the rabbit ragu were now seemingly nostalgic phantoms of yore living on only as mirages on the information superhighway.

This meant a preponderance of fair-to-middling pubby stuff, grub for students who’ve just received their grants or first dates pushing the love boat out. The areas where pool tables once stood are cleared for a doll’s house of tiny tables and chairs, and waitresses who once spent their evenings listening to drinkers complain about the new Nick Cave album now must bluff their ways through the strictures of the Soil Association. It’s all as improvised as watching a little girl totter around in her mummy’s heels. Firebird’s mission statement, and the slogan it has on its windows is “A Passion For Food”. I’d assumed this boded well.

It was fine in the end but it bore only minimal resemblance to the place proclaimed on the website. There was a special starter of salmon ravioli that, like all snacky elaborations on seafood, quickly became a game of find-the-fish, though it did all eventually congeal into a perfectly pleasant cheese and carbohydrate comfort goo; as did a main of a Brobdinagian Portobello mushroom baked with a skipful of cheese and vegetation. I thought it looked like a flying saucer that had crashed through a farmer’s market but The Other Person averred it showed some applaudable finesse in its assembly. There was also a main of lamb in crusty, pesto-derived slap, perfectly serviceable but at sixteen quid it was punching well below its weight. I fear Firebird is another place that came into the world with great intentions but relinquished them gradually as the lure of wood-fired pizzas and girly white-wine sponge-food came to prove irresistible. It’s good for pub-grub but, as restaurant food, it has its baseball cap on backwards.

Firebird, 1321 Argyle Street, Glasgow, 0141 334 0594. Dinner for two with wine, £60

Explore Eating Out

• A A Gill

• Giles Coren

• Winner's Dinners

Times Recommends

• Champagne cocktail
• Food that's good for body and soul
• Joe McCanta’s never-fail hangover-relief shake