Episode 13: Before the students have a chance to sleep for the night, Dojima announces the next task, in which the students must prepare a buffet-style egg dish to be served at breakfast early next morning. As everyone spends the night trying to come up with a recipe, Soma decides on a soufflé omelette, which is met with silent criticism from some of the other students. As breakfast comes the next day, it is revealed the judges will consist of the hotel's guests and staff, with students needing to hand out 200 servings of their dish in order to pass. While many of the students including Erina, Megumi, and Takumi all manage to impress with their dishes, Soma struggles to serve his dish to anyone.
Episode 14: Due to the specific timing required for his soufflé omelette, Soma struggles to get any customers to try his dish before they end up deflating. With half an hour left in the challenge, Soma calmly analyzes the situation and changes his approach, cooking in front of his customers in order to attract a crowd while also delivering the dish in its peak condition. Optimizing his preparation time to cook his omelettes as quickly as possible, Soma manages to complete his 200 servings with mere seconds to spare. Afterwards, Soma is introduced to Erina's cousin, Alice Nakiri, who considers both Soma and Erina her rivals. Following another task a few hours later, Dojima treats all the surviving students with a banquet to celebrate the end of the training camp.
Episode 15: As the students make their way home, Shinomiya decides to return to France to make his restaurant the best in Paris, while the other alumni explain how the training camp also serves as a recruitment ground to determine potential for future employment. Soma ends up missing his bus and has to hitch a ride back to school with Erina, who explains the next event, the Autumn Festival. Returning to the Polar Star Dormitory, Soma is surprised to see his father, Joichiro, who is revealed to be an alumnus and former member of the Elite Ten who went by the name Jouchirou Saiba. As Joichiro treats the returning residents to a meal, Fumio explains that Joichiro and Dojima were once fellow Polar Star residents who were responsible for many of the luxuries the dorm has. It is also revealed that Erina has fond memories of Joichiro as well. Later that night, Joichiro tells Soma about his campus memories, filling him with more determination. The next morning, Joichiro challenges Soma to a cooking battle.
Episode 16: With Fumio, Megumi, and Satoshi as judges, Soma and Joichiro are challenged to use ingredients from the kitchen to make a light yet energizing breakfast dish that will wake them up. Soma presents an apple risotto, which provides a crisp taste that changes with the addition of black pepper. Joichiro, on the other hand, presents the unusual choice of ramen which, despite its heavy appearance, turns out to be a mellow and warming vegetarian dish, providing powerful flavor without meat or fish. The judges unanimously vote Joichiro's dish the winner, though Soma's dish also receives some praise. As Jouichirou takes his leave, he leaves a message recommending Soma visit the Yukihira Diner during the holiday.
Episode 17: Arriving back home, Soma temporarily re-opens Yukihira Diner to serve his loyal customers, including his childhood friend, Mayu Kurase, who has a crush on him. He learns that the Sumire Shopping District has been doing poor business lately due to the arrival of a popular karaage chain shop, Mozuya. Wanting to help revive the shopping district, Soma decides to come up with a competing karaage recipe, calling in Ikumi as his meat expert while Mayu winds up as his taste tester. The three do some recon at Mozuya, where they find its CEO Kinu Nakamozu to be a spiteful woman, before beginning work on a karaage recipe of their own. As Soma takes Mayu's suggestion to use their shopping district location to their advantage, it is revealed that the figure behind Mozuya's success is one of the Elite Ten.
Episode 18: Noting that the shopping district focuses more on walk-and-eat food, as opposed to Mozuya's packaged approach, Soma shifts his focus towards creating a karaage that can be enjoyed straight out of the fryer. Opting to go with chicken thigh meat with a chilli-based marinade, Soma gets inspiration from a bento shop owner and decides to serve his karaage in rice flour wraps with salad, providing enhanced flavor, portability, and appeal all at once. This brings a large amount of business, which in turns helps the rest of the shopping district come back to life, and Nakamozu has no choice but to admit defeat. Afterwards, Soma puts Mayu in charge of helping with the karaage's sales, having noticed her good qualities. Returning to the academy, Soma is brought before Mozuya's puppetmaster, Etsuya Eizan, the ninth seat of the Elite Ten, who informs him that he has been chosen for the Autumn Elections.
Episode 19: The contestants and rules for the Autumn Elections are announced, in which the sixty selected contestants are split into two groups which they must top in order to advance to the tournament phase. Megumi is approached by a girl named Miyoko Hojo, who was interested in her shokugeki with Shinomiya, but becomes disappointed when she hears she was helped by Soma. After learning the first dish of the elections is a curry dish, Soma and Megumi pay a visit to Jun Shiomi, an instructor and Polar Star alumna who specializes in curry and spices. Using Jun's theories on spices, her assistant Akira Hayama, who is also in the elections, demonstrates that preparing the same ingredients of a curry dish in different ways can yield drastically different results. Wowed by the powerful flavors of Akira's curry, Soma becomes determined to beat him in the preliminaries.
Episode 20: With the challenge of creating a curry dish set, many of the contestants set off to visit their families and study up on spices during the remainder of the summer. Soma stays at the dorms to try out various spice combinations. The Autumn Election preliminaries soon arrive, and it is revealed that only the top four from each group will make it through to the tournament phase. As the contestants begin cooking, Soma appears to have fallen asleep.
Episode 21: Soma awakens from his nap when he senses that his spice and vegetable infused rice is cooked to perfection. Meanwhile, Megumi brings out a monkfish for her dish, having learnt how to butcher it in order to help her family. With the cooking period over, the judging soon begins with a harsh panel of judges giving most of the students low scores. In Group B, Nao Sadatsuka, a somewhat creepy girl with an obsession with Erina, presents an extremely pungent laksa dish made using kusaya that secretly carries a delicious flavor under its strong odor, scoring 84 points as a result. Meanwhile, Erina's secretary and childhood friend Hisako Arato, who Nao has a rivalry with, presents a mutton curry made using medicinal cuisine which undoes the curse-like effects of Nao's curry, scoring 92 points.
Episode 22: Miyoko scores 87 points with her pineapple cha-han, while Yuki gets 86 points for her wild game curry. Afterwards, the Aldini brothers face off against each other, with Isami presenting a curry calzone that scores 87 points while Takumi presents a curry pasta dish using tamari soy sauce and cheese filled pasta, and scores 90 points. Alice then presents her deconstructed curry dish that leaves the judges bewildered and amazed, earning 95 points and taking the lead. Finally, Megumi presents her dish, monkfish dobu-jiru, which emphasises the taste of her hometown, earning her 88 points and landing her a spot in the main tournament alongside Alice, Hisako, and Takumi.
Episode 23: Back in Group A, contestants are struggling to score as one of the main judges, Natsume Sendawara, keeps giving out zero scores. This streak of zeros soon breaks when Ryo Kurokiba, Alice's aide, presents a lobster curry made using a cognac base, earning 93 points. Next, Ikumi presents a Dongpo pork curry, using what she had learned from her Shokugeki with Soma to impress the judges with a complete dish and earning a score of 86. Afterwards, Ryoko presents a Dal curry made with charcoal-grilled natto and soy sauce rice malt, also scoring 86, while both Marui and Ibusaki earn 88 points with their white potage curry udon and smoked curry, respectively. Then, Akira presents his dish, which turns out to be a fragrance bomb.
Episode 24: Akira's dish, which has a powerful fragrance and uses the power of holy basil and yogurt, earns a score of 94 from the judges. Finally, Soma presents his own fragrance bomb, combining his past two failures into a curry risotto omurice containing a mango chutney. The dish earns Soma 93 points, landing him second place behind Akira. However, it is noted by the crowd that although Akira received a higher score overall, three of the five judges ranked Soma's dish higher than Akira's, with the implication being that in a Shokugeki, this would have given Soma the victory. Afterwards, when the contestants hold an afterparty celebrating and lamenting their victories and losses in the preliminaries, Soma becomes determined to improve his cooking finesse.
Rating: 7/10(Average)
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