Linton Hopkins—restauranteur, entrepreneur, much-lauded chef—is sitting at a quiet back table in his flagship Atlanta restaurant, eyeing a salad. And fretting.

The salad is small, chunky and colorful: cubes of cucumber and tomato, crisp shards of olive bread, a swath of aioli underneath, a drizzle of dark vinegar and grass-green olive oil. It is a modern take on a panzanella, an Italian peasant dish that uses the juices of ripe summer tomatoes to revive stale bread.

If he were making it in his restaurant kitchen and serving it to his restaurant customers, Hopkins could control the dish exactly, prepping the panzanella just far enough ahead to deliver it at the perfect intersection of creaminess and crunch. This version, though, won’t benefit from