I was very impressed with the food, but I'm not a reliable source of judgement. 1) I've found I have a very unique food interest i.e. things I find good most others do not. and 2) we were on a very tight budget so we only ate real local food a few times. Those times we kind of splurged on nicer places. Other than that we were surviving off the typical sort of cheap food you can get anywhere.

So, the food we had was really good, but given it was our only opportunity to really try it we actively sought out places that we knew were going to be really good. I'm bummed to hear you had a different experience though! Although, I can see how the expectations can be a factor. I somewhat forgot they are known for that