Independent Bar & Restaurant

“People are more aware of the sources their food is coming from — fish especially, more than anything else."

The Independent, a restaurant and bar in Union Square, has been around for less than a year, but its floors are at least a century old. Whiskey-colored and shot through with nail holes, the heart-pine boards were cut from structural beams that once held up a mill in Buffalo. "We wanted to give a sense of history," says Independent co-owner Conor Brennan. Another Somerville business helped him get it.