Irony now since he lost due recreating Pai cooking without he himself realizing and previously he failed to recreate Pai cooking that ended up causing his first defeat
We need more instances where the MC of a cooking duel manga goes to the tasting phase first and still won.
@Midoriha, well, after the Goddess's palm thing, the final judge basically admit that Mao's tofu dish is better by a hair thanks to the bamboo leaves' aroma, so it's not just because he deems Shouan's cooking not as original as the maker claims.
But yeah it's very poetic and one amazing display of karma by the author. *P.S. also, don't you mean poetry instead of pottery?