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What’s in a name? Does it matter that the new StandardX hotel in Fitzroy, part of a luxury chain of internationally owned hotels, tried to open as The Standard Hotel in the same suburb and on the very same street as the 159-year-old Standard Hotel, a beloved – and excellent – neighbourhood pub?

After mediation, the US-based owners agreed to add that edgy X, but I’m still a bit baffled that it was an issue in the first place. When you put $60 million into a project, you might check to see whether there’s another business nearby with the same name, if not to be neighbourly then at least to improve customers’ chances of finding it when they search online. (Speaking of which, if you type “The Standard Hotel Fitzroy” into Google, the native search results are all for the pub, but the sponsored results – shown above the others – are for the StandardX.)

It’s industrial, it’s boho, it’s undoubtedly a vibe.

How about Bang, the new restaurant next to the StandardX lobby? Sure, it could be short for Bangkok – this is a Thai restaurant, after all. Or perhaps the inspiration was the bang-pop-pow flavours for which Thai food is known. But there’s another, yes, edgier connotation that seems unmistakable, and, frankly, a bit cringeworthy.

All of this semantic peevishness would be overkill if the business and the restaurant seemed particularly in tune with the neighbourhood they occupy or the culture from which their culinary inspiration is drawn. But the names matter here because they point to a deeper lack of substance: the idea that with enough money, design and marketing, coolness in and of itself can achieve success.

Many things about this place scream success. I’m not a hotel reviewer, and I haven’t seen any of the 125 guest rooms available, but accommodation in Fitzroy is limited, and the inner north in general has few hotel options that match its status as a hipster destination.

And the feel of this place is kind of amazing – like a portal from grubby Fitzroy into some kind of West Hollywood/Byron Bay hybrid. It’s industrial, it’s boho, there’s caramel leather and rough finishes and knobbly woven fabric accents. There are nooks and crannies and wide open bits, and it feels a little like an Ace Hotel but slightly more carefree. It’s undoubtedly a vibe.

The food is courtesy of Justin Dingle-Garciyya, an Australian-born chef who has worked all over the world for various high-end hotel groups.

His menu here is meant to be flexible – bar snacks, full meals, banquets for groups, and everything in between. There are lots of Thai classics that have a slight twist – an unexpected protein, a cheffy cooking method, truffle in the dumplings, and so on.

Genres are blended, as with the blue swimmer crab doughnuts ($28), advertised as pa thong ko, the Thai-style Chinese cruller. Here, the fried dough is hollowed out and the crab is used as filling, but the result is that the doughnut gets soggy from the crab by the time it hits the table.

Oxtail spring rolls ($18) are tasty, the meat lending an interesting heft to the dish, and may be the most straightforwardly pleasant dish I ate during my visits.

Some things fell victim to overcooking, particularly the som tum Thai ($38), an unremarkable papaya salad with two huge Skull Island prawns that were cooked to a stiff crisp.

On the other hand, slow-cooked beef short ribs ($88) were beautifully tender, falling off the bone, but the coffee and ginger sauce they came drenched in was fairly bland.

Lack of flavour was also a problem with the farang kwai teow ($38), self-consciously subtitled as “white boy noodles”, a bowl of rice noodles with blue swimmer crab, lobster sauce, spring onion and lime. They aren’t bad; they’re just missing the stank, the spice, the wok flavour, the umami that makes most Thai noodle dishes irresistible.

OK, so, the food is what it is, and the room has its vibe going for it. So you might want to come here for a sneaky cocktail with your fellow hotties, right? Sure. Just be forewarned: among the cute but fairly sweet options lurk a few drinks that are face-punchingly saccharine.

In particular, the Park-Waan ($24), which reads like a Mojito made with dark rum, Thai basil and lemongrass, was so sugary, it almost lost its status as a liquid. My teeth still hurt.

Am I nit-picking with the name thing? Perhaps. But ignoring a storied nearby business and resorting to puerile wordplay when it comes to Thai food are both failings that are emblematic of the overall problem here.

Community is important. Being respectful of the cultures you borrow from – and use as inspiration – is important. Not just for feel-good reasons, but for commercial reasons, too.

The era of the luxury hotel is upon us in Fitzroy, for better and worse. I just wish it felt more aligned with this actual neighbourhood and city.