Highlights
- Soma Yukihira's unique cooking style, developed from working in a diner, sets him apart from his peers at Tōtsuki Culinary Academy.
- Soma's Gotcha! Pork Roast dish showcases his ability to improvise and create culinary bliss, even with limited ingredients.
- Soma's cooking is fueled by his resourcefulness and passion for food, emphasizing flavor and the heart and soul behind a dish rather than fancy techniques or expensive ingredients.
Food Wars!' shōnen hero Soma Yukihira is the most unusual student at Tōtsuki Culinary Academy, in comparison to his peers. Where his fellow students are culinary prodigies, food chain heirs, or privy to fine dining all their lives, Soma's experience is a bit more rough around the edges.
His style of cooking is the product of working the line in a diner and improvising a dish to suit all customers who walk through his doors. Every time he cooks, his dishes come together in culinary bliss as he cooks in his signature off-the-cuff way. There is no greater example of this than his Gotcha! Pork Roast dish in season one, a perfect introduction to how Soma cooks.
The Gotcha! Pork Roast
In season one of Food Wars!, Soma and his father Jōichirō Saiba are running a popular family diner called Restaurant Yukihira. One night as Soma was closing up the diner, an urban planner named Yaeko Minegasaki approached Soma to inform him that he should sell the diner to her for her new building plans. In response, Soma burned her business card and said that the only way Restaurant Yukihira will close was when they could not satisfy a customer.
Yaeko did not take this refusal lightly, and the next day Soma opened up shop to find the diner in a terrible state. It was vandalized and all the food in the kitchen and fridges were ruined. Yaeko returned with her team of goons, confessing that they were the culprits who wrecked havoc on the diner. Cockily, she throws Soma a challenge. She dares him to make her a juicy meat dish, and if he succeeds the diner will be untouched. Knowing that they destroyed everything in the kitchen, she feels pretty confident that the diner will be hers.
As Yaeko cackled in his face in confidence, Soma, armed with the groceries he bought for breakfast, accepted this challenge. He tells her that if he serves her a meal that satisfies her palate, she must never enter Restaurant Yukihira again. Freshly clad in his chef gear, Soma gets to work. Yaeko and her men watch in awe as Soma begins mashing, slicing, and dicing ingredients. Yaeko even had to double-check that everything in the fridges was destroyed. She wonders how is he making her a juicy meat dish without any proper ingredients. Eventually, Soma presented a steaming glistening pork roast to her.
The aroma alone caused Yaeko to blush and sweat. From the first bite, the juices of the bacon sensually flooded her mouth. She goes in for more, but only for Soma to yank the plate away from her. He reminds her of her promise to leave Restaurant Yukihira alone if she is satisfied with her meal. Hypnotized by the scrumptiousness of the dish, she makes good on her promise as long as she has some more food. Yaeko and her men proceed to eat some more of the pork roast, in awe at how Soma put this dish together. In true Food Wars! fashion, they erupted into orgasmic satisfaction as they indulged the dish further.
How did Soma make it?
Using only the ingredients he bought for breakfast, Soma used his signature improvised style of cooking to whip up this extraordinary dish. He steamed potatoes until they were soft, then chopped up mushrooms for fiber and onions for sweetness. After this, he kneaded the potatoes, mushrooms, and onions together and formed a sort of mash, shaped into a log. He then wrapped thick-cut bacon strips around the log, strung it together with kite string, and pierced some rosemary pieces into it. When his oven was hot enough, he slowly roasted the dish. As this was roasting, the bacon was getting crispy on the outside, but the real flavor bomb was happening inside. The potatoes and mushrooms soaked up the savory oils and flavors of the bacon, creating an abundance of umami.
While the pork was roasting, Soma melted butter in a pan to make a sauce. To this, he adds red wine, sweet sake and soy sauce, and the sauce is complete. When the pork is done, he drizzles the sauce over it to create a "sensual new texture" of crispy bacon on the outside, paired with juicy goodness on the inside.
What does this dish say about Soma as a chef?
The idea for this dish came to Soma when he made a mistake while making another dish. He made a potato salad for a customer, but accidentally plated the meat too close to the potatoes, resulting in them soaking up the meaty flavor. With this blunder, he managed to get an idea for something that mimics a pork roast, a lesson that saved his diner. His ability to spin straw into gold is an admirable trait and is evident in his cooking style.
Soma as a person is very resourceful. His quick-thinking nature on how to use the ingredients that were on him to produce a pseudo meat dish is impressive, and another highlight of his cooking. We see this many times throughout his journey at Tōtsuki, such as when he makes a mackerel burger for his dorm entrance exam and when he uses potato chips to make a crusted fish dish. His out-of-the-box thinking is exemplified by this pork roast.
You won't see Soma studying a special kind of ingredient like Akira Hayama, or using the latest culinary technology like Alice Nakiri. The heart of Soma's food is its unassuming and wholesome nature. He is not going for the fanciest-looking dish or looking for the most expensive cut of beef. For Soma, everyone appreciates food cooked from the heart and soul. The real edge to Soma's cooking is his knowledge of flavor, and this pork roast is chock-full of it. It's not about the exact temperature of the oil or the technical methodologies for Soma, the flavor and feeling is what's most evocative about his food.
This pork roast was not only a perfect reflection of Soma's cooking style, but of Soma as a person. He is cheeky, sassy, and passionate. The dish was a statement, a protest. It was a message to say that the diner that he loves so much will not be sold. Restaurant Yukihira is a symbol of his love for food, family and community. He will not let it go easy, and this dish shows the quality of what his diner can do. He almost taunts Yaeko, making her eat her words about wanting to get rid of this so-called useless diner. Soma is passionate about food, it is genetic as his father and late mother Tamako both are chefs. His love for the craft is boundless, and this Gotcha! Pork Roast is the perfect example of that.