Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Built into a decommissioned bank vault, the Vault, a restaurant that opened in San Francisco’s Financial District in late April, is far from the Scrooge McDuck vision of what that means — you’re not sitting on an expanse of gold coins and jewels. No, the reality of the Vault is that it’s a windowless, tomblike room where money once was, where that sense of value is all in your head.

The Hi Neighbor restaurant group is the team behind this restaurant and a host of others (Trestle, Corridor and Fat Angel) and it has come out the gate swinging. In a year when most of the notable restaurant openings have been quick-service spots or casual offshoots of firmly established concepts, the Vault is a rare bird: a freshly minted fine dining restaurant. Star chef Robin Song currently leads the kitchen with a menu of American standards and a few Asian pantry items mixed in.

The Financial District, like many of its ilk across the world, doesn’t necessarily need a restaurant with as many ideas packed into it as this. It’s safe to assume that the ecosystem of lunch counters and straightforward lounges where one can wait out rush hour with $7 martinis is fairly self-sustaining, so one has to respect the risk of opening a restaurant like this here. Partner Ryan Cole even told The Chronicle during earlier coverage that he aimed to make the place a destination. I mean, sure — if you’ve ever wanted to go to a theme restaurant where the theme is a fixation on money and the food is a mere accessory to that vision, this is the place for you.

The Hi Neighbor team has clearly made an effort to affect their own take on opulence in the space, with personal liquor lockers for regulars and the cool, gray-tinted color scheme that’s popular among the highest tier of our region’s fine dining restaurants. It feels very much like the interior of a luxury car, but blown out into a restaurant.

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Even the restroom is a sight to behold. Wallpapered with stills and quotes from heist films like “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Town,” the restroom feels just as on-the-nose as the enormous vault door on display in the lounge. Among others, there’s a line from Patrick Swayze’s larcenous surfer dude in “Point Break”: “Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst fears to come true.” While some of it feels jokey, another part of me suspects that the romantic notion of the gentleman thief, the huckster in a tuxedo, has found a stronghold in this place.

The restaurant’s playlist dips heavily into the musical stylings of Postmodern Jukebox, which cranks out covers of pop songs that mimic the big band and classic jazz genres.

“It kind of reminds me of ‘Mad Men’ in here,” remarked one passerby to her friends as they departed. That seems pretty on-point, given how works like “Mad Men” have become more notable for their aesthetics than their social critiques in the years since their heydays. I don’t mean to rag on your Gatsby-theme dress-up parties — maybe I do — but some of you have clearly not read the assignment. From the music to the movie stills, the restaurant seems like an exercise in pop culture bricolage, meant to pique one’s interest without sustaining it with anything meaningful.

From what I’ve observed, the restaurant’s intended audience of Financial District workers —7,000 in the building alone — have shown up, probably encouraged by the spiritual ease of a happy hour spot that feels like a romantic vision of what they do for a living. The aforementioned liquor lockers have already begun to be claimed with Japanese whiskey and other high-end bottles. Tellingly, weekdays seem busier than weekends here: I didn’t wait for a seat at all during prime Saturday dinner time.

That may be a problem if the Hi Neighbor team aims to make the Vault a destination for folks outside of the building it resides in.

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

In particular, nothing about the menu seems like something one would go out of the way for. All the boxes have been checked: seafood platter, Parker House rolls, steak tartare, fish tacos, vegetarian pasta main, steak, duet of duck, et al. The menu prices are on par with what’s normal in the neighborhood, but the lackluster execution failed to make good on the price point’s promise.

The duck dish ($32) pairs confit of Liberty Farms duck leg with seared breast, a dry and oversalted number made even more unpleasant by the promise of “dirty rice.” Said rice is an unctuous mix of grains that taste like they just came out of the pot: I didn’t pick up on any liver-tinged or aromatic character to it.

On my first visit, the Maine lobster salad ($34 for the equivalent of one lobster) was peppered with shell fragments; thankfully the situation improved by the next time I came in. Dressed like an East Coast lobster roll, the salad is served with a clutch of soft Parker House rolls that gleam like polished doornobs, but at dinner the bread service lagged behind: I ended up picking at my salad until a server appeared with the basket.

At lunch, fish tacos made with fried black cod ($19 for three) were garnished with dollops of avocado puree and quick-pickled napa cabbage that dripped liquid onto the plate. With the side of juicy white beans served both whole and pureed, the dish as presented was incredibly beige. Worst of all were the chicken nuggets ($14), battered squares of ground chicken that evoked tofu, like a reverse Impossible Burger. The black lime ranch sauce that accompanied it tasted like lime curd; the combination was rather revolting.

I found myself asking, “Why?” a lot while dining here.

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

Why are the chicken nuggets perfect rectangles? Why call that rice “dirty” when it’s just multigrain? Why do the menu’s attempts at individuality fall so flat? Why did the server tell me the restaurant is “known for” the chocolate lava tart ($12) when it’s only been open for three weeks?

To be fair, there are little tweaks and “takes” on classic dishes here that speak to a sense of vision. The menu’s prose, limited to the ingredient list format that Bay Area restaurants love so much, reveals fragments of brilliance within the classic dishes.

Iacopi Farms artichokes are fried and braised for a light and cheesy dip ($14) paired with three gorgeous seeded rye crackers that would make even the most finicky birds shriek with happiness. And I have no qualms with the tender rib eye ($49), dry-aged for 28 days, then served here with fermented chile paste and roasted brassicas. It was cooked perfectly, though the mix of broccoli and cauliflower on the side had the personality of those Green Giant steam-in-a-bag products you can get at the grocery store. That said, the leftovers make a great fried rice the next day.

The beverage side of things was, by contrast, solid. I was impressed with the sensibility of Hi Neighbor partner and beverage director Jason Kirmse, whose beer and wine lists would speak to both connoisseurs and folks who just want something “good.” I really enjoyed browsing the beer list in particular, which highlights domestic craft breweries with a fascinating lineup of funky selections: a bretty saison ($14) from Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, an ancho chile-infused stout ($17) from Prairie Artisan Ales and a fruitcake-smelling Belgian quadrupel ($10) from San Marcos’ Lost Abbey.

Photo: Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle

From the bar, the best cocktail on the list by bar manager Tyler Groom is the Hi-Chew ($14), based on green tea vodka and served with a yuzu pate de fruit. The wine list contains a broad, international selection that you can visually peruse in the dining room’s wine racks, held behind glass windows that are the most vaultlike part of this place.

The Vault 555 California St., San Francisco, 415-508-4675 or www.thevault555.com Hours: 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 5 p.m.-10 p.m. Saturday. Accessibility: Wheelchair-accessible entrance on opposite side of the building from the restaurant. Gender-neutral restrooms with heavy doors. Noise level: Moderate in the dining room, louder in the lounge. Meal for two, sans drinks: $100-$160. What to order: Artichoke dip, chicken liver mousse ($14), rib eye, Hi-Chew cocktail Plant-based options: Sparse: Four vegetable dishes and one pasta main. Drinks: Full bar. Transportation: Regularly bad car traffic. Parking garage across the street on Kearny. Short walk from Montgomery Street Station. Best practices: Liveliest during weekday happy hours; quieter on Saturdays.

Overall, in a place with larceny as a theme, it’s hard to not feel like you’re being ripped off. This place is priced for celebration and special occasions, the kind of spot you’d take your guys after a successful heist, where you’d suavely snap your fingers to make buckets of Champagne appear at the table. In that way, it does feel like a destination: But the food, and the execution thereof, doesn’t live up to that idea.

It’s hard to discount the inspirational qualities of its restrooms, though. As I walked out of the restaurant for the last time, I spied a Bank of America ATM beeping loudly and flashing a light, indicating that some unfortunate soul had left a wad of bills just sitting in the mouth of the machine. One last heist and then I’m out of the game, I told myself. I looked around for the cash’s owner, but that was my fatal mistake: The ATM swallowed up the money and I became a normal, wimpy person again. I think I prefer that anyway.