Granite isn't out over here. Every house we built in the last 5 or 6 years have had solid surface counter tops. Granite, corrian, and concrete have been the norm. The big thing lately has been concrete though.
My Dad and I completely remodeled his kitchen a few years ago. It used to have crappy formica counter tops and ugly cabinets, so we gutted the whole kitchen. Ripped the ceiling down, vaulted it and included a couple skylights. Put down uneven edge tile floor in brick-lay pattern. Installed new oak cabinets at uneven levels with crown moulding. Seeing as he wasn't going to spend the money on big slabs of granite for the counter tops, we just used 12X12 tiles butted together and trimmed the edges with oak. It looks fantastic and it's hard to tell at a glance that it is a tile counter top. I took a couple quick pictures for ya:
Picture 1
Picture 2
I say do the granite tiles, you'll like it.