Food Wars volume 1 - Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki

 Okay, so Food Wars has a loyal following I read, but to be honest, never have I gotten round to either manga nor anime.

So when I snatched a deal on Facebook with the first 5 volumes in it, I was more then willing to give it a try.

The story begins with Soma Yukihira facing off against his father, a chef in a small restaurant, in a cooking contest... and losing for the 489th time.  He really is focussed on beating his dad one day in culinary skills, but loan sharks are after their restaurant in order to build large appartement blocks there instead.

When his dad decides to close the restaurant for three years to go work in New York, Soma is send to the best culinary school in Japan, where only 10% of the students manage to graduate.  To be allowed in, he must pass the taste test by a girl called Erina, who has "the divine tongue" as a superb taste tester, and her causing the other entrants to run away before even starting to cook.

He takes the exam, but she unfairly fails him due to her seeing him as a commoner.  However, he is accepted in the school none the less, as her grandfather, who is the dean of the school, secretly tasted the dish afterwards and overrules her.  For their first lesson, he is teamed with a bottom rank grade girl, Megumi.  Their dish is sabotaged by other students as he insulted them during his speech at the entrance ceremony, but drawing on his yearlong experience working in a restaurant he pulls them through with flying colours.  Because Soma has 12 years of actual experience cooking versus the often only 3 years of schooling of the other students.

The manga contains two more special side stories as well about how he beat Erina's secretary in a challenge, and it actually has the recipy in it for the dish he cooked for Erika.  I guess I`m actually one day am going to give that dish a try honestly.

This was a welcome discovery of a series, and one I will be persuing for certain over the coming months and years as a result, so you'll be seeing volumes of this series pop up in my haul reports now and then!