The competitors get fired up when they discover this particular competition is all about grilling! Only to find some strange basket fellows in the Appetizer Round: striped bass and strawberries. In a smok'n Entrée Round the chefs try to glean ideas from one another on how to handle a tricky ingredient. And in the last course, a classic American food, perfect for the grill but peculiar in dessert, complicates the judges' final decision.

When panic sets in at the end of the Appetizer Round, the judges cheer on a competitor who appears to be giving up on making a completed cookies and clam dish. Then in the rush to get a tantalizing venison entree finished, one chef makes a dangerous mistake. And even though they find peanuts in the dessert basket, the finalists know that they are competing for so much more. The two remaining chefs take the intensity level in the kitchen up a notch as they face off for $10,000.