After McDonald’s withdrawal from Russia, the first restaurants open with a new name and logo.
Moscow. Dmitri ordered french fries and a cheeseburger. “Like always,” he says. “Just like always” he came to the branch on Dorogomilovskaya Street, near the Kiev railway station in western Moscow. “Just like always” he ate his lunch here between several meetings of his business trip from Saint Petersburg to Moscow. “It tastes like it always does,” says the 35-year-old programmer on this Sunday, when Russia celebrates its so-called Russia Day and on which McDonald’s is definitely no longer a McDonald’s. “Vkusno i Totschka” (“It tastes good, and that’s it”) is the name of the fast-food restaurants that the Siberian entrepreneur Alexander Govor has taken over. “Things aren’t the same as they used to be. The name in particular is disappointing,” says Dmitri, who prefers not to give his last name.
In 1990, the US fast food chain opened its first branch in Russia. Almost 5,000 people lined up at Pushkin Square in Moscow to try their first Big Mac and thus rid themselves of their socialist taste buds.
Now a few dozen mostly younger people are sitting in the sun on Pushkin Square.