Don't underestimate how much this country hated green peppers. Shinnosuke Nohara, for one, and even... even after Umaru had eaten Sogo's green-pepper dishes—so delicious!
She still had a psychological aversion to green peppers. It wasn't that Sogo's green-pepper dishes tasted bad; it was simply a matter of habit. To give the simplest example, if the hamster dumpling were allowed to choose between Sogo's green-pepper dishes and Erina's high-end feast... Umaru would unhesitatingly set her sights on Erina's cooking. If this were a Shokugeki, Sogo Doma would have lost from the very beginning!
Ahem. Setting aside that dumpling's personal preferences, most of the chefs in the Kondo Group had attended Totsuki. Or rather, most of them were students expelled from Totsuki. These failures from Totsuki couldn't exactly be said to lack culinary skill; they had simply challenged the wrong person... If that still didn't make sense, just think of Ikumi Mito. Without Sogo Doma, if the terms of her Shokugeki with the protagonist had been changed to expulsion, wouldn't Ikumi have been finished on the spot?
And the Kondo Group's chefs consisted of this group of
"failures"—which was why, even though Sogo hadn't visited the Kondo Group in years, its members still held him in considerable regard!
Food, clothing, shelter, transportation—Sogo had solved the food problem. Of course, for those
"failures," the positions Sogo offered were extremely enticing as well. The Nakiri Family might have been the Great Demon King of the culinary world, but in the capital market, they couldn't even compare to the Four Great Financial Conglomerates!
Yet the Kondo Group was an organization that even the Four Great Financial Conglomerates had to take notice of. Being able to enter the Kondo Group was probably the best choice for those
"failures." Never mind anything else—after joining the Kondo Group,