The contestants and rules for the Autumn Elections are announced: sixty selected contestants are split into two groups which they must top to advance to the tournament phase. Megumi is approached by Miyoko Hojo, who is interested in her Shokugeki with Shinomiya, but is disappointed when she hears Megumi was helped by Soma. After learning the first dish of the elections is curry, Soma and Megumi visit to Jun Shiomi, an instructor and Polar Star alumna who specializes in curry and spices. Using Jun's theories on spices, her assistant Akira Hayama, who is also in the elections, demonstrates that preparing the same ingredients of a curry dish in different ways can yield drastically different results. Impressed by the powerful flavors of Akira's curry, Soma becomes determined to beat him in the preliminaries.