Over 63,000 outlets worldwide, but you won’t find any of them in Albania. According to the Financial Times, a crisis-racked Iceland joined Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the small group of European countries without a McDonald’s. Many of us rarely eat McDonald’s in the States, but food cravings for greasy mystery meat and perfectly salted fries made according to a secret recipe only really kick in once they are out of reach.
According to rumors I heard months ago in Elbasan, a McDonald’s will soon be appearing in Durres. Jaded by all those rumors of Red Lobster going in on the strip back at home, I told the smiling Albanian that wanted to share the joyous, capitalistic news that I would “believe it when I see it.”
Perhaps the oddest aspect in all of this isn’t that we are in a foreign, McDonaldless land, but rather the whole-hearted attempts to fill this Value Meal void. There are completely random restaurants made to mirror American fast food establishments all over the country. I’ve seen them in numerous Albanian cities: maybe it’s a restaurant front that looks eerily like a KFC or something with a name easily mistaken for “McDonald’s” at first glance. Try as they might, when they sell me a “hamburger” made out of a ¼” thick spiced pork patty, I’m not going to approve. Maybe that’s just semantics. The best of the knock-off restaurants is in Tirana. Called “Kolonat,” its logo somehow resembles a letter “M,” (I don’t even know how the “M” would even figure into the equation since it’s a fast food restaurant starting with the letter K) and its color scheme is… you guessed it, yellow and red.
McDonald’s has come a long way in a short time, for better or for worse. But just not Albania. And even though I never eat there when I’m at home, you can have no doubts that I’m going to put a burger and fries away on the first day I’m in neighboring Macedonia.
On a somewhat related note: check out The Economist’s Big Mac Index.
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