And restaurants have the setup to brine birds for several days, then let them air-dry for several more, as executive chef Robert Sisca does at Bistro du Midi. He gives the skin a final layer of crispness under a salamander just before serving.

At Craigie on Main, chef Tony Maws first cooks his chickens sous-vide in a bag with roasted chicken fat. For the final step, the bird is rubbed with butter and togarashi salt and browned in a combi oven until the skin is crisp. This is probably not a method the average home cook can undertake. And the average home cook’s roast chicken will probably not be featured on Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate,” as Craigie on Main’s was.

These restaurant chickens are indisputably delicious. But there is something just a bit sad about them, too. Have we become too unmotivated or unconfident in the kitchen to roast our own? Some argue that food is the new rock ’n’ roll. Maybe it’s more like the new religion: something everyone can believe in. (Rock ’n’ roll, of course, being the old new religion.) Restaurants are our community gathering spots now, and often our family gathering spots, too. They bring us together, they ease our physical hunger, but perhaps we need more. A roast chicken makes us feel cared for.

“I think a lot of people do trust restaurants to do things better than they can,” Maws says. “Cooking a roast chicken at home is a little bit of a time investment. In this day and age, people don’t spend as much time eating at home. There’s the nostalgia. A whole roast chicken for me brings back memories. I’m certainly not alone in that.”