I recently came across a salad so exceptional that it made me hopeful for the future. The lettuces responsible for this flutter of optimism weren't your typical green insalate: They were a rainbow-hued selection of biodynamically grown flowers, herbs, and leaves handpicked from the gardens of the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Piazza Duomo in Alba, a quiet medieval town in Northern Italy.

The salad, all bright emeralds and red-veined shoots and yellow blossoms, arrived at the table like an edible Matisse painting: super tweezery and technically precise in its fancy, almost extraterrestrial plating, yet made from the simplest, most rustic ingredients.