Shokugeki no Soma

[Buffalobiian]

A better way they could have shown Souma's superiority over Mimasaka would be to have the ingredients varied or be rotten / contaminated.

Say they both ordered some oxtail from Supermarket A and it ended up being contaminated or bad. They would have had to make adjustments on the fly. Mimasaka may predict what Souma would make, but he wouldn't be able to make it since he's never seen/copied it prior. His skill base wouln't let him pull it off first hand either because he's only ever copied someone's best works without experiencing the failures that came before it.

Souma would be able to come up with a decent dish first-go because of his prior experience. Something like that would be believable, but at the same time feel "cheap" all the same because Souma didn't really beat Copy.