Original Air Date: June 19th, 2015
Megumi's dish is ready. After a long deliberation, Koujirou also realizes the kindness in her cooking, bringing up old memories.
This episode provides examples of:
- Evolving Credits: The rotating dish in the opening changed. For the ending "Spice", the foodgasm reaction is from Koujirou.
- Graceful Loser <—> Sore Loser: Zigzagged. Once again, Soma shows this trait after the Shokugeki is over.
- Happy Flashback: After tasting Megumi's food, Koujirou starts remembering when he was a child and got in a lot of fights with the other kids at school. After his mother reassured him that he was a nice kid deep down, he cried a little and went back home to have dinner.
- Hyper-Awareness:
- Gin was the first person to recognize Shinomiya's stagnation even before Shinomiya himself.
- After tasting the Terrine, Koujirou is the only one who noticed the use of allspice in it.
- Shun is the first one who notices Soma's bruise on his hand after he hit a wall.
- Hyper-Competent Sidekick: Soma shows himself to be an impressive sous chef, expertly assisting Megumi through each step of her recipe.
- Impossibly Delicious Food: Even with all the technical issues of the dish, Megumi's Rainbow Terrine manages to delight the Legendary alumni and bring Koujirou Shinomiya to tears, as the dish reminds him of his mother.
- Jerkass Realization: Tasting Megumi's terrine made Koujirou realize that his cooking lost human warmth after years of struggle in France.
- Large Ham: After slapping Soma in the face for risking both him and Megumi in a Shokugeki, Yuuki starts crying loudly.
- Manly Tears: Koujirou starts crying when he recognized the motherly love in Megumi's cooking.
- Mythical Motifs: The Alumni were discussing nicknames for Megumi, such as "Household Spirit", "Snow Child" or "Koroppoku" (all benevolent spirits from Japanese Folklore). Fuyumi then lampshades this by asking why all the metaphors were youkai.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Soma and Megumi never stood a chance: their opponent is a professional chef with more years of experience and success, and was the top culinary student when he was their age.
- Technician vs. Performer: Shinomiya as the stern Technician and Megumi as the caring Performer.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: After a long history of failure, bad grades and people talking behind her back about her lack of talent, Megumi was touched when the Alumni started to praise her dish.
- Token Minority: In his flashback, Shinomiya remembered that he was discriminated and bullied by his own employees, who changed his recipes because they thought "they were too Japanese for the clients".
- Tranquil Fury: Soma waits until Megumi is out of sight to slam the wall in frustration for losing.
- Twist Ending: Even though Megumi's Terrine gets praises from all the judges, she and Soma still lose. However, Doujima manages to make Shinomiya realize both his stagnation and Megumi's hospitality, tying-up the score (with a little help from Hinako) and allowing Soma and Megumi to stay and Shinomiya to realize what he must do to become an even better chef.
- The Unapologetic: Yuuki's first reaction is to welcome Soma with a big slap and blame him for everything, and Megumi has to clarify that if it wasn't for him, she would have been expelled right away. Instead of apologizing, she bolted to cry on Ryouko's lap.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: After getting a lot of compliments about her Terrine, to her shock, the three judges gave their votes to Shinomiya. Both Soma and Megumi were devastated while Shinomiya gloated on their defeat... Until Doujima gives them an unofficial vote to acknowledge their efforts.
