BIG MAC AND FRIES MATTER

THERE’S A DIFFERENCE AT MCDONALD’S these days. The fast food chain has gone through a metamorphosis, an overhaul of the brand that has made it less like McDonald’s by making it “Just like McDonald’s”. Big changes have taken place in the decades since I was a regular customer. Developments that have briefly transformed me into a regular again.

When I returned, I was reminded of my first time, in that blistering 1976 summer of punk and droughts, when McDonald’s was an oasis on London’s Haymarket. It was exotic to those of us raised on the wrong side of the river and reared on Wimpy. More importantly, it was American. “The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s,” Andy Warhol once said. “The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald’s. Peking and Moscow don’t have anything beautiful yet.” My fortuitous return occurred in Vienna.

I was staying at the Grand Ferdinand on the Ringstrasse,