[shahahmed]

"The dish was meant to be a difficult pickup that required constant coordination between the front and back of house. That was what made it great."

This feels like the crux. It's not arbitrarily doing the hard, stupid thing, but the ones that are based in making the product or process better.

[larkost]

I disagree. The final product (the food) is not better in any way for doing this. I do see the value of not making the server lie to the customer by pretending that they were going to get the "stunt chicken", but this whole problem seems to be caused by trying to make the preparation of the food into a show, and here is a case where the showmanship is getting in the way of efficiency.

If they just got rid of parading out the chicken in the middle of the process they could stage more things without implicitly lying to the customers, while improving timing. You would just lose some showmanship, which might be part of the brand.