If I were to hazard a guess, I would imagine that much of it, in a country famously and rightfully proud of its culinary heritage, was railing against the very idea of an American fast-food chain in an iconic Hungarian complex, albeit one designed and built by the French engineering firm Gustave Eiffel and Company, of Parisian tower fame.

The space where McDonald’s is today was the station’s first- and second-class railway restaurant and beer hall when Nyugati Station opened in 1877. In the mid-20th century, it was operated by Utasellátó, the Hungarian State Railways’ catering company. From the 1960s to the 1980s, it had become self-service and was known as the Démusz Restaurant. In other words, it was always an eatery of some form or other. It wasn’t as if McDonald’s had taken over a chapel.

The condition of McDonald’s renting the space was that it pay for the renovations and, in so doing, respect the building’s protected status. That is why it has such unusually ornate ceilings, large arched windows, and decorative columns, all inherited from the station’s 19th-century architecture rather than built for a fast-food restaurant. When it opened in 1990, it was one of the most architecturally distinctive McDonald’s locations and soon became one of the best-known in the world.

So, here’s the rub. Would all those people bemoaning an American fast-food chain in an iconic Hungarian building rather it had been allowed to wither on the vine? It had long since ceased to be a grand station restaurant, and had become an increasingly underused cafeteria. Think of all those 1990s tourists who got off a train and didn’t know much about Hungary, but recognized McDonald’s and, in stepping inside to buy a burger, got their first insight into the grandeur and splendor of what Budapest has to offer.

This is exactly the process of giving new value to underutilized historic buildings that our real estate editor, Gary J. Morrell, writes about so often. Think of the rebirth of the Corinthia Hotel Budapest, which had closed in 1991 as the Grand Hotel Royal, but reopened in 2003. Or the twin Matild and Klotild palaces, now high-end hotels. Or the Drechsler Palace, the former Hungarian State Ballet Institute, which was largely empty and deteriorating from the mid-2000s until it was restored and reopened as the W Budapest in 2023.

There are plenty of other examples of previously undervalued, underused, and seemingly unloved Budapest buildings that offer tourists who can afford it an experience beyond a simple bed. They bring life back, they restore, preserve and reopen. And from a sustainability point of view, much better that than demolishing an old structure and building from new.

I said at the beginning that time heals. From January 2024, the restaurant was closed for six months to undergo a major facelift. That included careful preservation of the building’s historic Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Romantic architectural features, restoration of decorative stucco ceilings, antique-style lighting, and other heritage interior elements, and a complete modernization of the kitchen, seating, and ordering systems. When it reopened in August 2024, the restoration was widely praised for highlighting the original 19th-century architecture rather than obscuring it. Maybe Budapest has finally made peace with the idea.

Robin Marshall

Editor-in-chief

This editorial was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of July 3, 2026.