Neutron stars are like ogres: They have layers. At the very, very top, you’re under zero pressure (because there’s nothing on top of you pushing down), and so you do have a layer there of basically normal matter. It’s just an extremely thin layer, too thin to usually be worth worrying about. Below that, each subsequent layer is under more and more pressure, and so is less and less like what we think of as normal matter.
And if there’s any way to produce or maintain any of these substances at lower pressure, we don’t have any idea of what it would be.