Question for the audience: what city do you most associate this style with? For me it's Seattle, because that's where I live, and ugh, it's everywhere.
I don't associate this with any particular city, but with the rich neighbourhoods in every city, particularly the recently rich neighbourhoods built from gentrification and forcing the existing poor residents out. An upscale "urban eatery" is a sure sign that the neighbourhood is destroyed.
Winston-Salem, NC. This looks like 3/4 of our downtown hipster spots. Except everything here is also a microbrewery. Soooo many different IPAs. I didn't realize that there were so many ways to make beer that tastes like shit.
Are IPAs somehow cheaper to make or something? Like the whole microbrewery scene has devolved into "We make nine IPAs, whatever the fuck a cucumber lager is, and a stout."
Hops cover up shitty beer very easily. That’s a big part in it.
Even with a dozen microbreweries within a walk of my house, it’s over half IPAs. I love them, but my wife is sad about the lack of stouts. There’s a couple of good breweries with solid stouts, so it’s not too bad.
Came here to call out Seattle too. Those chairs especially show up in any style of restaurant it is wild. I see this some in Spokane (or I did when I was there last don't know if there are more or fewer of them in the last few years).
I was gonna say SF, but now that I think about it the burger places there tend to be a bit more quaint and definitely don't have the live laugh love shit everywhere. At least I've never seen one, but it's a big fucking city so there's almost definitely at least one.