Maybe this is just a matter of getting old, but lately I find myself just as bored with the trendy independent spots. There is an oppressively generic quality to, say, the typical microbrewery as of 2021.
The distinction seems to fall between between local or immigrant businesses, where character shines through, and the kind of place that some rich individual or couple retiring out of finance or software built because they had money to spare. Many of these places look like they have been designed off of a template.
Granted, I have never lived anywhere with a shortage of reliably decent restaurants. This is a problem that I notice more often when traveling, especially to places in the West or South.
There's this place in Northampton whose name I can't remember right now that has this "shabby chic" repurposed-industrial-furniture-and-mason-jars aesthetic that I've always found absolutely infuriating but that a decade ago was at least distinctive. Nowadays there are at least four or five such places in Northampton, plus at least one or two in pretty much every other city or town of any size that I spend time in.
I know exactly what you mean. I went to a place in your and Averroes' part of the world in Littleton, NH (20 mins from St Johnsbury) which was an old converted warehouse straddling the Ammonoosuc River that managed to avoid this ambience and be rather enjoyable. The lack of students and tourists (they seem to go closer to the White Mountains) helps, I think.
