I was thinking about motivations, Hayama and Ryo; let me share what I thought. Prestige is not a weak motivation if prestige is something socially respected. Even more if it's something respected in the world of gastronomy. I mean, in some contexts, prestige is rather something weird or shallow (politics, law, education, news), and you wisely can have reservation towards prestigious people. But the good thing with food and tasting is that you can hardly lie; I mean or it tastes good or not and your tongue is most of the times much more reliable than the best written technicall book (on the contray a prestigious layer or politician can lie and at the same time be trusted easily or for his quotes and speechs). So a famouse chef hardly can have a profesional career made up of lies or of half-good dishes. That's why being a great chef can be consistent with beating the best cooks in a prestigious culinary academy.
The author has done a little but good worldbuilind job on that respect. In a field in which you can lie, like the gastronomy world, there are people who knows more than other; then there are teachers and great teachers and apprentices and great apprentices and also academies. Also there are students that want to be or the best or simply a great chef. That's all the topic of getting the top. Soma and Hayama, like many others, want to get the top. They want it for different reasons, that could be true; but in this world, there is no need to have an ulterior reason for being a great and presigious cook than simply being a great and prestigious cook.
So Soma pusues that goal and in his case that goal is a part of a more complex story involving his father and also Erina (but he stil doesn't know it/well me neither but…). Talking about the psy side, Hayama is pretty much the aristocratic dauphin type; he's calm, he has good manners, he's seems to have had a healthy infance (ate all the soups), he's good looking, and on top of that he's passionated about what he's trying to accomplish. His family has hopes that he's going to be a very great chef. But he also has some special relationship with Jun, since he cares about her and wants to prove they both make the perfect couple. Now, alking about the cook, he was protrayed as someone with a potential similar to Erina; he's the god's nose, Erina the god's tongue. Being his nose that special, he has a theme, so to say it, in the gastronomy universe, namely, the aromas. All of that's enough to make of him a believable character. I mean he's believableas a character in that world the author has created.
Now, talking about wanting to get the top of the top, and coming back to the worldbuilding, I really like Joichiro. Because, wanting to be the best or wanting to get the top is kind of psycotic passion if you compare it to simply wanting to be a great cook or one of the best. In Joichiro's story the author has put there some material to develop the idea that breaking with a prestigious academy makes sense. Like if about being a great chef, there is much more than having a degree or a title. On that side, the prestigious topic is really interesting since, in the recurrency of Soma challenging Erina's believes about what is to be a great cook, the story could be read as if it would be trying to say that to be a great cook you also has to have some 'weird' skills like cooking for the masses and not only for the top tasters.
I agree about Ryo; he's kind of weird and I don't quite get his character's motivations.
--- Update From New Post Merge ---
Soma's dish colored.