Reading this, reminds me of myself walking pass china town restaurants stating authentic Chinese special mala soup, compare to what I've tasted in Sichuan China, it's absolutely nothing special 😌 I got that, it's like you look at the bowl of red and spicy soup that's supposed to be "special", the moment you took a bite... It came with a combination of smoke Chicken juice and Brinjal coconut pancakes.
Some of my favorite dishes look so non-special just by their presentation and some of the best looking food I have had has been tasteless overpriced crap that seeing as how well organized the food was, to me that says that the people in the kitchen touched every single vegetable that is on my plate. I don't like that. Give me a tray of unorganized tasty slop any day.
one of my favorites is an egg noodle soup in Thailand that has pig blood in it and being told that almost scared me away from ever trying it. It looks like a bowl of slop but man oh man is that stuff delicious.