Curing a Big Mac attack with a visit to McDonald’s has gotten a little more chic in a handful of the fast-food giant’s 250 New York City locations. Diners are treated to egg chairs, wide tables, bright walls, and fresh art deco panels, elements based on a store model created by French interior designer Phillipe Avanzi, the mastermind of similar redesign efforts at McDonald’s locations in Europe.

One of the redesigned Manhattan stores belongs to Jim Lewis, a 14-store franchisee who moved to New York from Michigan to help his uncle run the franchise and ended up buying it. Lewis said he was sold on the Euro look last year, when he and corporate officials, along with a handful of other New York City franchisees, visited some of the Avanzi-designed stores in London and in Paris.

“Once we stepped into those locations, the consensus was clear among everyone that this would be a very special project to bring back to New York City,” said Lewis, whose restaurant on Broadway near New York University is one of four in the city that are debuting the Avanzi redesign in the United States.

Lewis declined to say how much the redesign cost, though he did say it was his personal decision to renovate the restaurant.

by Cody Lyon

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