McDonald’s in Subotica: Art Nouveau? I’m Lovin’ It

More than two arches

Inside, the Golden Arches had competition. Wooden chair backs curled into loops. Beyond a green metal railing hung a large chandelier dotted with red and white beads.

There was rather more to examine than the menu.

The City Hall was designed by Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab in the Hungarian Art Nouveau style, with its interior decoration completed in 1912.

Panels of coloured glass hung above the lower seating area, their amber-coloured borders catching the light.

Even the coffee came decorated

It was hot, and I ordered an iced coffee.

Back home in Japan, I usually expect that name to mean black coffee served cold, with milk and syrup left for me to add. Here, my drink arrived topped with a generous white swirl beneath a domed plastic lid. It was sweet, and considerably more elaborate than the drink I had pictured.

Elsewhere, a picture of fries hung beneath an ordinary tiled ceiling. There was a children’s play area, and a metal bin stood between wooden partitions fitted with decorative lamps. The building had plenty of ornament; the restaurant still had things to get done.

Commerce was less of an intruder here than it might first appear. The City Hall was planned as both an administrative and a commercial centre, and shopkeepers moved into the ground floor in 1910.

This corner opened in 1912 as the City Café, with red velvet booths and a garden behind a wrought-iron fence. Journalists, writers and painters met here. After the Second World War, young communists set out to settle accounts with the bourgeois past and threw the café’s marble tables out through its windows. It closed in 1946, and a department store and a restaurant followed.

McDonald’s arrived in 1997 and left the restaurant’s stained glass, carved panels and ironwork more or less as it found them.

Above the entrance was the familiar “I’m lovin’ it”. Below the slogan, a burger advertisement stood in the window. A pushchair stood beside one of the wooden tables.