As an American:

Are they all different? Yes.

Does that make them good? No.

Fifty shades of mid. The best burgers can't be found at chains.

Now chains for entrees other than burgers & fries, on the other hand, you can find find some surprisingly decent quality food.

both are kinda wrong. in my experience, there's like three different kindsa burger places. There's the shitty ones, which are usually at least hella cheap but are no better than McDonalds or Burger King. Then there's the good ones, where you can get a tasty burger with a house burger sauce and like caramelized onions. For both of those, yeah if you've ate at one of them you've basically ate at all of them. You're not gonna find a burger so orgasmic that it fixes your depression or anything; there's an upper limit to how good one can be. (though if you do plz let me know)

However, there's also a ton of places that I'll affectionately call "weird" ones. this encompasses a wide range of wild shit, like a place that'll make you a burger with six patties stacked on top of each other like some kinda beef monster, or make an "italian beef burger" which includes italian beef and giardinera on top of a patty, and the whole thing is dipped in meat drippings, or a place that uses donuts instead of buns and deep fries the sucker. These are all very distinct foodcrimes, and IMO it is worth going out of your way to behold them if you find yourself stateside.

Locals are crazy about these regional chains because their frame of reference is the national chains — namely McDonalds and Burger King. They are usually MUCH better than McDonalds (which is not saying much) at about the same price, with no other direct competition in the local area.

Everything seems great compared to McDonalds.