Well, it’s a low bar but I suppose this week’s Food Wars amounts to a small improvement.  That’s because while the silliness of the current plot driver still hangs over it, this episode does at least focus on food.  And even if the circumstances of the shokugeki with Eizan are pretty silly and the rest of the stuff going on in the episode even sillier, the battle itself is more or less typical Shokugeki no Souma.  And that’s a step up from what we’ve been getting the last couple of weeks.

I do like gyoza – they’re especially great before ramen (and next to a large glass of beer).  But if this “winged” gyoza is a real thing, I never saw it in all the time I’ve spent in Japan.  Pork, ginger, garlic, soy – kind of hard to go wrong there, but stuffing it inside a deboned chicken wing instead of a wrapper is novel.  I’m kind of with the judges on this one – it does seem kind of like “B-grade gourmet” cooking to me, especially once you add parmesan cheese and tomatoes to the mix.  Gimmicky.  But the proof is in the tasting, I suppose, and it certainly did look good.

As for Eizan’s dish, that’s one I’ve had a few times as every branch of Chinese cooking seems to offer some variation on it.  All of the social divides Shokugeki no Souma trades on are on display in the juxtaposition of these two dishes, that’s for sure.  And that’s well and good, but it does beg the question of whether Souma’s gyoza was really so wonderful that it would get bought and paid for judges to turn on their benefactor and vote for it over Eizan’s dish.  That seemed like plot convenience to me, but since the episode on the whole was more entertaining and less infuriating than the last two, I’ll take my encouragement where I can get it.