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Tom lightens the mood when he brings them ingredients with which to make s’mores. It’s easy for him to play good cop when he gets to leave and sleep (presumably) in a warm hotel bed, while the chefs rough it in their camping tents.

Six hours later, the chefs are up and at it again. While her fellow chefs fight amongst themselves for space over the fire, Carrie has created an oven by burying coal and her cake batter (contained in individual cups, as she was unable to find a camping dutch oven) under the snow. Her first batch goes badly—the batter is heating up too much, too quickly. She adjusts and hopes for the best.

And hope she must, as she’s part of the first group for service. She serves her upside down cake with strawberry, rhubarb, and blueberry jam next to Joe’s braised and roasted squab with farro, Fatima’s cacao-spiced duck breast with sunchokes, and Bruce’s egg yolk cavatelli with wild boar and roasted ramps. Everything is a huge hit. Fatima’s duck is delicious, Bruce’s pasta is fabulous, the judges can’t stop eating Carrie’s cake . . . the only slight slip up is the fact that Joe’s squab is a bit overcooked.

The next group approaches the judges, which elicits a “Oh my goodness, it’s Lee Anne Wong!” from Gail. Yup, fourteen seasons later, Lee Anne is back and on top of her game. She has a goose confit with goose cracklings and fiddleehad ferns. The judges absolutely devour it, going back to scrape more sauce off of the serving platter. They also love Adrienne’s quail stuffed with mustard greens with purple corn grits, though the breast is a bit overcooked. Claudette guajillo-spiced elk wins raves, which is tender and juicy. Moustache Joe has a warm trout fumet (some sort of broth) which the judges love with his roasted trout with foraged greens.

With no obvious weak links so far, it’s down to the final group. Tanya has what looks to be a faux Thanksgiving platter with a grilled lamb loin with a mushroom sauce, warm farro salad, and blackberry compote. The dish confuses the judges—they have no idea how to eat it or what the intent is for any of the components. Chris has a buffalo chili with buffalo flank steak. While the judges enjoy his chili, the buffalo steak is dry as a bone. They also have issues with Tu’s rabbit three-ways (soy poached, loin medallions, and fried foreleg), which is dry and accompanied by flavorless garnishes. Finally, Brother serves up a lemon-herb pheasant with rutabaga and ramps, but his protein is overcooked and chewy.

As the judges start their discussion, it’s clear that most everyone in the first two groups did well, and that the weakest dishes were all in the final group. In the end, Bruce, Lee Anne, and Carrie come out on top. Bruce’s sauce was delicious and paired really well with his cavatalli, which he ingeniously rolled out using the grooves in his mandolin. Lee Anne’s fiddleheads were well appreciated by Gail, and Tom praises her sauce as one of the most delicious things he’s tasted in a long time. Finally, Carrie earns well deserved plaudits for her cake, which could have gone so wrong, but ended up being light, fluffy, and having just the right amount of sweetness. One gathers that the cake would have ended up as one of the top dishes, even if made in a regular kitchen.

But as impressive as Carrie and Lee Anne’s dishes were, Bruce takes home the win, which he credits to the lesson he learned of cooking his food the way he knows how to cook it. He pledges to abide by that lesson for the remainder of his time on Top Chef.

Tanya, Chris, and Tu are on the losing end of things. Chris was done in by his buffalo steaks, which was really dry. Tu was far too ambitious in trying to do rabbit three ways, which would have been a struggle to accomplish in a regular kitchen, much less a campsite. As for Tanya’s dish, the judges express total confusion as to what her intent was. She explains that the mushroom sauce was supposed to be eaten with her lamb, while the compote was supposed to be eaten with the farro, and the judges all let out an involuntary “Oh!” of understanding.

It looks like Tanya has saved herself from elimination—while her error seemed to be one of conception, it now looks more like one of plating. That pales in comparison to Chris’s error of drying out his buffalo and Tu’s error of trying to do too much, sacrificing execution.

And that does him in. His dish was overly complex and left little focus on the garnishes. Tu says that he was expecting the result, though it doesn't make it any easier to accept. He’s grown during his time on Top Chef and says that he’ll keep finding ways to evolve through his culinary career.

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