Something seems to be going wrong at Bluebird London, the busily programmed 10,500-square-foot restaurant that the mall in the Time Warner Center imported from England in September. Maybe the people in charge have been taking management cues from Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, which has approached its Brexit plan like a class of first graders trying to build a working jet airplane out of Lego pieces and a flying-squirrel sock puppet. Or maybe the mess back home has just sapped the restaurant’s spirit. Whatever the cause, what was meant to be a cheerful gift from London has turned into the Bluebird of Unhappiness.

Sir Terence Conran opened the original Bluebird in 1997 inside an Art Deco garage built on King’s Road in Chelsea for the Bluebird Motor Company. It was one of his “gastrodomes,” those soaring complexes like Quaglino’s and Bibendum that embedded restaurants within a busy hive of shops, cafes and bars. The gastrodomes’ designs were talked about more often and more enthusiastically than their menus, which aimed for unthreatening familiarity. The current owners, D & D London, have managed to keep the London Bluebird in circulation by changing upholstery and chefs, but it is not at all clear why they or the Time Warner Center believed that a Bluebird clone would play in Manhattan in 2018.

True, the retail shop has been dropped. But up front, next to the desk where the hosts have mastered the art of checking reservations without making eye contact, is a cafe-slash-wine bar. A glass case there serves as a temporary prison for aging pastries and tragic snacks. Beyond is a lounge followed by a bar, the centerpiece of which is an enormous plexiglass sculpture of a ponytailed woman’s head that doubles as a shelf for weird liqueurs.

Just before the ramp that descends to the main dining room is a console with two turntables which, a note on the website says menacingly, are operated on weekends by “live DJs.” At other times, the restaurant stages such events as a workshop in the art of making “a seriously chic wreath.”