I honestly think the worst thing Strange New Worlds could have done was forcing a female interest to Spock AND Kirk instead of listening to 60 years of devoted fans and implicit content.
We are in 2023!
Star Trek is about pushing boundaries and elevating society to a place where romance can feel natural, even between two men.
The only reason of why they would have thought that Kirk went to this bar just by looking at a Kirk x Spock carved on the table is because everyone in that timeline was aware that those two were dating. That they were a couple and people knew about it in Starfleet for generations.