Akira Hayama

Akira Hayama is a former 92nd Tōtsuki Generation student and Jun Shiomi's assistant. He is proficient in the usage of spices and is known for his incredible sense of smell and mastery of aroma. He is the former 9th seat of the Elite Ten Council. Akira has dark skin and long, white hair that is mostly tied in a ponytail when he is cooking. His bangs are neatly swept to the right. He also has green eyes and is considerably tall and handsome. He often wears his school uniform unbuttoned with a shirt inside and a loosened tie around his uniform collar. When Akira cooks, he wears a dark chef's uniform. In his youth, Akira's hair was shorter but still retained his side-swept bangs. His clothes were much dirtier considering the living conditions of the neighborhood he grew up in. Akira is a confident and calm student in Tōtsuki. Due to his sharp sense of smell which rivals Erina's God's Tongue, Akira proudly displays his ability and is not afraid to say that he is the best chef in the school. Like many of his classmates, Akira firmly believes that he will stand on top of Tōtsuki thanks to his abilities and is one of the few people who will stand up to Erina, declaring that he will claim her spot. Akira tends to stay in a neutral mood, rarely showing any sort of shock when confronted by any opposing force, even the likes of Subaru Mimasaka and Ryō Kurokiba. It is stated by Fuyumi Mizuhara that he only thinks about winning, never considering the possibility of losing. He is extremely diligent, always covering up for any sort of mistakes that Jun Shiomi forgets to do around the seminar room.

Much of Akira's drive comes from Jun, who found him in the streets of an unknown country. She brought him to Tōtsuki to expand his horizons. Since then, Akira has been thankful and has served as her assistant. He has stated that Jun is the reason why he continues to cook. As such, he even denied a lucrative job at the Haubi Food Company solely because his only purpose is to help Jun and refuses to stand at the top of Tōtsuki without her help. However, he is not above scolding her for being neglectful and even lectures her when she is irresponsible despite the fact that she is an adult while he is still only a student. His feeling of debt to all she has done led him to join Central despite his initial rejection of its ideals. Since being blackmailed into becoming a member of Central it seems Akira has become far more arrogant, egotistical, and seemingly callous, but still regretfully betraying his friends and even Jun. However, his bond with Jun still remains his strongest connection. Akira was orphaned at a very young age and has no memory of his parents. He lived many years in the slums of an unnamed country, often scavenging through trash for food only to be subsequently beat up by adults. During one of his outings, he headed to a local marketplace and saw a young girl attempting to buy spice from a merchant.

However, before she could buy them, he warned her that he could tell from his acute sense of smell that she was about to buy a weak blend. Although it greatly upset the merchant, Akira escaped with the girl and told her that a little girl should not be in such a shady marketplace alone. To his surprise, she introduced herself as Jun Shiomi, an adult lecturer at Tōtsuki Culinary Academy. Impressed by his smelling abilities and learning that Akira was an orphan, Jun immediately adopted him, taking legal custody of him. Aromatic Cooking - Akira has mastered the art of aroma cooking which is heavily based on the smell that his dishes give off to perk up the taster. Akira firmly believes that this art helps to further engross eaters into his food, concentrating on their olfactory senses to truly immerse the eater into his world of cooking. While the dishes smell wonderful, they do not lack in taste, bringing together a harmonious blend of smell and taste. Akira's cooking has further improved since joining Central and becoming the 9th Seat of the Elite Ten Council. Acute sense of smell - Akira's most defining feature is his acute sense of smell, which is somewhat similar to Erina's God's Tongue. He is able to cook his dishes "blindly" as he can detect any minute changes in his dish just by the changing aroma coming from the pot, thus he can cook without having to look into his pot. His sense of smell is so sharp, that he can pick out and name all spices on a plate from a distance blindfolded and can name their position on the plate in relation to each other. His sense of smell has been shown on multiple occasions, one such, where Akira was able to pick the best Pacific Saury from the fish market without looking at all. Spice Mastery - Akira has a particular affinity with spices, displaying a wide variety and vast wealth of knowledge of their properties. He is also well aware of how certain preparations of spices during the cooking process can change the overall flavor of a dish, even if the spice preparation was the only change. He has easy access to rare spices including Holy Basil, which normally is hard to care for and is not grown locally in Japan, thanks to his job as Jun's assistant, which he has no problem maintaining on his own. He has shown to be able to use a lot of spices and create cohesion, and inversely, use just a single spice to make a powerful dish. Doner kebab - A doner kebab is a Turkish dish made by stacking meat then roasting the meat on a vertical spit. After the dish finishes cooking, the chef carves off any excess meat. The process melts the fat and spices throughout the meat. Akira used this device for his Tōtsuki Autumn Election Main Tournament Quarterfinal Match. Kozhi Varutha Curry - Akira's signature curry dish that uses water instead of coconut milk to cook his curry chicken. Referenced from Tamil Regions of India, Akira's version of the Tamil-Nadu dish would consist of some fresh spices inside the dish. Advanced Kozhi Varutha Curry - Akira's improved version of the Kozhi Varutha Curry and this time the curry is actually made with water to make the curry drinkable without tasting the tense spice upon it.