The dining experience at a high-end restaurant might be poles apart from that at a fast-food chain, but to architect Nelson Chow - who has created interiors for both - there's no difference in the design narrative.
One minute, Chow, founder of up-and-coming Hong Kong design house NC Design & Architecture (NCDA), was decking out the swank Krug Room at the Mandarin Oriental in Central, and the next he was in Shenzhen, reimagining a McDonald's outlet.
Chow, in fact, is making over a slew of outlets for the world's largest hamburger chain, for even though McDonald's is one the most valuable brands ever, reportedly selling more than 75 hamburgers a second worldwide, competition adds to the heat in the kitchen.
Decades after American Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's in 1954, it became a kind of comfort for the masses to know that wherever they went in the world, they could walk into a McDonald's and it would look roughly the same. Other brands such as KFC, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and Subway followed suit.
Today, the tables have turned. Ed McMahon, a community planner and resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, says most fast-food chains are willing - sometimes eager - to give their restaurants an individual style, so that new franchises "can be an attractive community asset rather than a homogenising eyesore".
NCDA is rolling out new-look McDonald's restaurants in up to 500 locations across China, beginning with the new Shenzhen flagship.
Gustavo Maggio, co-founder of Singapore-based design collective Outofstock, says the trend towards more upmarket design of fast-food chains is linked to customer demand for healthier food. By designing the space to feel "less plastic and artificial", it gives the impression the food will also be fresh and natural, Maggio says.