It just feels incredibly forced. All of this screams Soma x Nakiri. Jouchiro never had any interest in teaching Soma, shows little sense of responsibility, but somehow had a pupil somewhere that beats both him and Soma the moment he pops up out of nowhere. He then condescendingly proclaims Soma knows nothing of love, but then he interprets Jouchiro's most important life lesson (that you need to cook for someone you love) as just finding the best female chef. Not only is that ridiculously childish and flaccid, but he then tries to woo her with the most cliche and cringeworthy attempts imaginable. Consequently he than pulls a 180 and abducts her -.-
Then out of the blue they begin the Blue competition that inexplicably is rigged in favor of the dark chefs and despite Soma being Tootsuki 1st seat, he still gets mocked for being from a diner. But above all how is it possible that not a single character pointed out that Suzuki is nothing more than a watered down version of Jouchiro and Azami as I'm pretty certain that's how Azami weaseled his way into the Nakiri family. So you would think that Erina of all people would notice this pattern, but no she acts as your stereotypical love-obsessed-without-understanding-love teenager.
This irks me. No less then three primary characters have been mangled so far.