As someone in a mid-sized heartland city, we've got nice bars and restaurants (no, seriously). Main pain points:

1) decent "ethnic" cuisine of certain types falls in the mid-range-and-up category, price-wise, for the most part, with few delicious but cheap options like larger coastal cities may have (Indian food, for example). I do not know why this is. Actually-good bread is also weirdly expensive. We do have surprisingly-good fine dining and good bars, and a ton more food variety than a coast-dweller might think, so there's that.

2) Really far from any decent "outdoorsy" stuff unless you like fishing on kinda-ugly lakes, or hunting in kinda-ugly woods. Hiking? Most of a day to reach mediocre mountains, a long day to reach real ones. Local "hiking" is largely indistinguishable from a neighborhood walking trail in terms of what you'll see (which is to say, not much). Beautiful desert vistas? 1.5 days or so. Any part of the ocean? Again, 1.5 days of driving, minimum. Great lakes? Not close enough to those either, 1.25 days to reach parts of those other than Chicago (1 long day for that). No such thing as a long-weekend getaway to anything outdoorsy that's much fun, let alone single-day trips of that sort.