I cannot stress enough that I am not exaggerating, this is what a majority of this hell country looks like

Only major cities and tourist towns really have local restaurants worth thinking about. The rest of it is the same chains.

If you’re lucky you get to pay an absurd amount of money to live somewhere that looks like this instead

And then it’s still mostly chains they’re just much more expensive ones.

in the US midwest, they're more suburban or rural, or at least if you live near major highways. it's very easy for golden handcuffs to choke out any local businesses in these places that simply lack the population density to support anything more niche. they literally pay employees more than local businesses, abuse their workers less because they have an actual HR department that provides some level of protection against the most obvious abuses of individual managers (ie mangers get fired for groping people, where small business tyrants just get away with it), charge less than anything local, and then once anything speciifc to that location has closed down they let the entire community rot.

the norm is much more around people visiting each other's houses, you don't really go anywhere other than a chain to hang out. there's a nice playground but that's generally not for adults on dates, that's for people with kids. there's not completely nothing but it's nothing that would wow someone that is turning up their nose at olive garden of all things. you simply are not going to be eating at a michelin star restaurant without a very long ass drive.

hell at weddings i don't think i remember ever actually being professionally catered. it's always either a pitch in or certain relatives assigned the task of making all the food. everyone just cooks at home. i've eaten much more baking sheet/pan pizza than i've eaten pizza at an actual pizza place, there's like two pizza places that aren't chains around here and i hate both of them.