Quote Originally Posted by shinta
The "they didn't try hard enough" part was limited to your comment that they got lax on recipes or didn't hide their plan properly (unlike Souma who kept it in his head, god knows everyone wrote their recipe on a sheet of paper and left it somewhere unguarded).
It's not that they leave it unguarded, but that they would have trialed it in person first instead of giving the judges the very first time they've made a dish.

I'm pretty much in agreement with shinta's post here, as well as Bud's post here

The entire premise of the battle is that:

1) In order to perfect something, you have to physically practice it (and Mimasaka would profile it)
2) In order to avoid profiling you have to improvise (and it would be inferior to anthing Mimasaka has prepared - see "brine was used for 5 days" segment)

Mimasaka is so good at profiling that no one tricks him. If you come up with something randomly, it will never be as great, even if it's good. (that was his prediction of Souma's dish)

Souma won because he broke both rules: That you can pull a dish first-go and have it surpass anything you've physically created before.



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Mimasaka is actually small fry. All of his previous opponents were either small-fry who knew about Copy but could never beat it, or were good chefs that weren't prepared to counter Copy (like Aldini).

Souma beat Mimasaka by thinking "What do I have that his copy can never replicate: 16 years of experience". (Shinta explains that the reason why Souma could do this while no one else could, is due to protagonist power. His argument is that improvisation should always be like this. )

Aldini may not have lost to Souma in experience, but he definitely lost by not being prepared for Copy. He didn't have a bunch of meats/ingredients at his disposal.