I ate dinner at one of the many new-to-me restaurants in Raleigh over the weekend. It was the sort of meal made possible by a visit from my parents as the restaurant serves small plates and you need multiple people to sample enough of the menu to get the full experience. The restaurant is only a few blocks from my apartment and I had walked past it many times but never eaten there. From the outside the entrance is only large, unadorned wooden doors. Inside, the space opens up into a two story dining area looking into an open kitchen. The back wall is the Instagram bait of the restaurant’s décor, a collection of Chihuly style glass in every color of the rainbow displayed from floor to ceiling.

We ordered dishes with flavors from all over the Mediterranean, from Spain to Greece to Morocco to Israel. Some were better than others, and for me the best were the short rib and the lemon potatoes, but we ended up eating in three courses as plates were brought out as they were ready. It is not normally the way I eat at restaurants, even with a group of people, but variety is good sometimes.

The food was good, though probably not good enough to justify another trip. There are, after all, many other restaurants to try in the Triangle. What was more notable, and why I chose to write about this restaurant, was that there was nothing about the place that indicated we were in Raleigh. Yes, the cuisine was Mediterranean, but that absence of place made the dining experience somewhat hollow. It may that be my own focus on trying to make this place my home that drew my attention to the way in which that restaurant would fit in perfectly well in Miami or New York, but that was my experience nonetheless.

Has anyone else felt something similar recently? I’d like some validation that I’m not the only one who has this observation that everything is becoming more and more similar regardless of where you are in the world.