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After the cooking is done, the finalists await their fate in the back. "I'm total nervous eating right now," Cosentino says, while picking at a plate.
They're called in to face the judges. Stone asks Cosentino how he felt it went.
"I think it went really well. There's always that question of do you cook for the critic and unfortunately the answer's no. And I had to cook meat."
"Are you more important than the diner, Chris?" Stone counters.
"When you cook with your heart and soul it comes through in the food. When you cook just to receive accolades, I think you lose direction and focus of what your goal is."
They praise Cosentino for putting so much of himself into this challenge.
"I love the nakedness of what you showed us in the letter to yourself," says Lam.
"We got a little insight into you, you know, you just go for it -- this is who I am on a plate," says Reichl.
"That's what you guys asked for," says Cosentino.
It's now time for the winner to be announced, and as we've been telling you allllll along this journey, there can be only one winner and that's Chris Cosentino.
He brought in $141,000 for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, and thanks to a matching donor lined up by the charity, that means $282,000 goes to the cause.
He looks shocked and weak in the knees when his name is called. He's surprised that he's won.
"I took a chance and did what I did and, win or lose, I wouldn't have done it any other way. Guts prevail, thank God!"
"Winning is a big apology to my family for being away, for working, for never stopping," he says, choking up. "It's kind of my way of justifying it all and doing the right thing for once."He's fitted into his Top Chef Masters jacket and poured a glass of champagne, the beginning of a whole new adventure for our local hero.
