Seattle has changed ... what would Kurt think?

At KEXP-FM Radio Station in Downtown Seattle - the station that launched Nirvana - I order The Buzz from a hipster barista with gold in her teeth and attitude in her service. The Buzz is a modern kind of latte, fused with cinnamon and rubio's syrup. Locals sit in leather couches, with designer dogs that might be out of fashion by Christmas. It's funky in here: I watch radio station employees as they work through floor-to-ceiling windows; though not one of them wears flannelette.

As I ingest The Buzz and feel its kick, I'm wondering - and not for the first time this week - what would Kurt Cobain make of all this? My question's rhetorical, of course, but a music journalist who knew him says he'd probably be a middle-aged man in a cardigan making vegan gin by now. No doubt, he'd order The Buzz.

Welcome back to Seattle, folks, where seminal grunge band Mudhoney have a riesling named after them, Eddie Vedder shops at Home Depot (think: America's Bunnings) and Nirvana is the state of mind one reaches when they discover Washington State has better cabernet sauvignon than the Napa Valley.

On April 5 next year it'll be 30 years since Kurt's untimely death. Kurt's band and the grunge music it disseminated to the planet made Seattle one of the coolest cities on this planet, even if it didn't want to be.

I arrive here on a warm sunny Sunday - and contrary to popular belief, it doesn't rain every day in Seattle. "We talk about how bad the weather is because it's not hip to be warm and happy," a barista with less gold and attitude tells me. "And because we want Seattle for ourselves. That's a common theme in this state."

The first thing to note about Seattle is its out-and-out prettiness. Kurt's lyrics might've been Gotham City-bleak, but the city he lived in is anything but. It's built on a stunning blue bay framed by snow-capped mountains to its west and east, and is dubbed the Emerald City for its proliferation of pine trees. Who knew?

The best tourist attraction in town is also one of the cheapest: ride the city's ferry network, like you might in Sydney. While tourists line up a full block-and-a-half to order a coffee from the world's first Starbucks (seriously, you want to line up... for Starbucks?!), I spend less than $US10 ($15) on a return ticket across to West Seattle, where Eddie Vedder still lives in a house he bought for $US435,000 in 1993.

There are suburbs all across Seattle that epitomise the city's post-grunge hipness: West Seattle is king of them. It's home to America's coolest record store: Easy Street Records. Grunge might be dead, but not here. There are enormous murals of Chris Cornell and underground grunge tragic Andrew Wood, and 20-something customers who weren't even born when Kurt died at the age of 27.

There's a bar and cafe in here that you need to be seen in. Every band you ever knew played live in here. Cornell used to eat breakfast here almost every week.

An understated chic-ness permeates all around West Seattle. There are as many tattoo parlours as restaurants offering some of America's best seafood meals (wild salmon, oysters and Dungeness crabs are all residents of Seattle).

My Uber driver takes me past Vedder's house, which is close to a sandy bay that looks back across the CBD. I order delicious fish tacos and a fiery margarita at a restaurant overlooking the water. Joggers and roller-bladers (yes, roller-bladers) stream past me on the boardwalk with smiles on their dials. And I find myself thinking: what would Kurt make of all this?

Neighbourhoods like these are all over the city. Capitol Hill is gay and leafy and indie-chic as hell; there are rainbow flags and vines growing across old brick walls of wine bars with historic facades. There are as many yoga studios and piercing salons as fashion boutiques here; not to mention theatres and food trucks and parks all overlooking stunning Puget Sound.

Just north, I spend a day and night in Ballard beside the bay, a former industrial area for commercial fishermen transformed into America's coolest suburb: all craft breweries and lounge bars and restaurants serving some of the best food you'll get on the West Coast. Once grungy and more than a little dangerous, it's now the place to go for lovers of a quirky bar scene.

Grunge heads might have drunk cheap beer and even cheaper liquor, but everyone drinks wine in Seattle these days. Washington State produces the second-highest amount of wine in the US behind only California, but get this: most of it won't leave the state and for good reason.

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Seattle has wine bars and urban wine tasting stores all over the city; dishing out wines from more than 1000 wineries in the state that you won't find anywhere else. With climate change, the state's growing the grapes that California can't anymore - rare big red blends in a Bordeaux style, cabernets and merlots blended with syrah and malbec are just a few examples. As America gets hotter, Seattle's wine scene does too.

There are more obvious attractions in Seattle - like Pike Place Markets, America's oldest farmers markets, the Space Needle, and the Museum of Pop Culture, which founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is easily the best interactive museum of its kind on Earth.

Just remember to ask yourself: what would Kurt think? So, cross off the obvious things, but dare to dig deeper. On my last day in town, I find the park where fans gathered outside Kurt's house in the days after his suicide. Graffiti is etched on the only bench beside bouquets of flowers, left more than 29 years on. Kurt might be long gone, but grunge's defiance, its perennial rock'n'roll-ness (for what can be more rock'n'roll than a brand of music that didn't care what anyone thought of it?) still defines Seattle. And how cool is that?

Getting there: Fly to Seattle via LA with Delta Air Lines, delta.com. Get around the city (and book the best sights) using a Seattle City Pass, citypass.com/seattle

Staying there: Downtown beside the harbour is the Thompson Seattle whose rooftop cocktail lounge has the best views in town, hyatt.com/thompson-hotels/seath-thompson-seattle

Playing there: Check out the rock'n'roll bar Nirvana used as rehearsal space, screwdriverbar.com. Hang out at the birthplace of grunge, centralsaloon.com. Check out America's best record store, easystreetonline.com. Visit 10 of Washington State's best wineries in one communal space, sodo-urbanworks.com. And sample Seattle's best produce in Ballard, parishnorthwest.com

Explore more: visitseattle.org; stateofwatourism.com

Pictures: Visit Seattle

The writer travelled courtesy of Visit Seattle and Washington State Tourism.