Inside the Nightclub McDonald's
DJs and projections transform the Budapest restaurant into a new type of third space
BUDAPEST, Hungary—The “most beautiful McDonald’s in the world” got a facelift, and now it’s going clubbing.
Located inside a train station built by Gustave Eiffel’s company (yes, the guy with a radio tower named after him in Paris), the Nyugati McDonald’s has long been recognized by online listicles as one of the iconic outposts of the Golden Arches. Last year, the functional part of the restaurant was modernized to include ordering kiosks, banquettes, and a glass-enclosed conveyor belt food delivery system popularized in the Sydney Sky Kitchen location but now implemented in dozens of restaurants around the world.
Upon reopening, an additional feature was announced: from 10PM until 4AM on Fridays and Saturdays, the restaurant would transform into Nyugati Lounge, with live DJ performances and projections onto the ceiling of the historic room.
McRuin Pub
When I first heard that the Nyugati McDonald’s would add nighttime programming, my thoughts immediately turned to another fixture of Budapest: the ruin pub.
Born out of a desire to reclaim abandoned spaces and turn them into all-day community hubs featuring art, live performances, and of course food and drink, ruin pubs have become so popular in Hungary’s capital city that they are prominently featured on tourism websites and walking tours.
The original and still the most celebrated ruin pub, Szimpla Kert, opened in 2002 in the old Jewish Quarter of Budapest. It’s something of a bohemian fun house, with a maze of rooms connecting various bars, shops, a cafe, all covered in art and graffiti that visitors can freely add to.
Comparing the experience at Szimpla Kert with the one at the Nyugati McDonald’s would be insane. But Ruin pubs have evolved over the years, with many of them taking on various forms and aesthetics. Places like Kisüzem, which is a rustic cafe by day and pub by night, and Doboz, which is more of a night club, demonstrate the range of establishments that now fit into the category.
But no matter what form of business the ruin pubs take on, they still fundamentally serve as third spaces in old or historic buildings with some sort of art or live performance involved. It wouldn’t be that big of a leap, then, to say that the Nyugati Lounge is simply the latest and most modern evolution of such spaces.
One Night at the Club
The Nyugati McDonald’s is standing room only in the minutes leading up to the start of the night programming. At 10PM sharp, the crowd cheers as the overhead lights flicker off.
The restaurant is initially shrouded in darkness, lit only by the glow of the ordering kiosks and the menu board behind the cashiers. Projections begin to appear on the ceiling of the train station hall—ruin pubs demand that art is involved, after all—eventually cycling between an underwater scene with dancing jellyfish, a futuristic cityscape, outer space, and a jungle motif.
The DJ starts spinning, opening with a club remix of the “i’m lovin’ it” melody. I am not kidding.
The overflow crowd leaves pretty quickly after they’ve secured their TikTok content and the novelty of the show’s start fades into fairly repetitive and nondescript house music. But the tourists and gawkers give way to the Nyugati Lounge’s core audience: young Hungarians.
Packs of teenagers, generally divvied up by gender, seem to genuinely use the space as the focal point of their night out, loitering for hours in one of the few establishments that will allow them to do so into the morning hours. It’s a safe space for all ages: while local beer is a staple on McDonald’s menus across Europe, it’s not available at the Nyugati Lounge. The teens would prefer to order a McFlurry, anyway.
An older set of customers begin to arrive around 1AM: people looking for sustenance after a night out. They don’t linger as long as the teenagers, so the restaurant thins out over the next two hours, to the point where the DJ is playing to a half empty room.
But at 3AM, the vibe is saved: two bachelorette parties dance their way into the restaurant, trying to keep their magical night going as long as possible. Several couples feel the same way, and are scattered throughout the dining area, canoodling over trays of half eaten burgers and french fries.
“What if we kissed at the nightclub McDonald’s?”
They do.
See more in McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches.