With hugely popular bistros like Balthazar and Pastis, Keith McNally has polished his restaurateurship to a fine art. The art is scarcely a culinary one; it’s closer to that of a movie-maker. He builds elaborate, expensive sets that faithfully ape the details of a faraway scene, and populates them with occasional celebrities and their avid audiences. Until now, the British-born entrepreneur’s visions have been largely of an imagined France, a land of zinc bars and steak frites. The fanfare last month was accordingly loud when Morandi, his Italian restaurant, opened in the West Village. It is a showpiece of exposed beams and brick, servers with heavy accents, chalkboards listing the regions of Italy, raffia-wrapped wine jugs, and similar props.

When Mr. McNally hired Jody Williams to realize the edible element of the Morandi vision, she had to stroll just a block or so to her new job from Gusto, where she had previously practiced her wideranging Italian cooking to great acclaim. At Morandi, as at Gusto, Ms. Williams cooks specialties from all over Italy; in fact, many of her signature dishes made the trek with her. Her accessible heel-to-shin, pan-regional Italian approach, with no recherché obscurities, suits the theme-park aspect of the new restaurant.

Dinner might begin with Venetian vinegared skate ($12), Florentine minestrone ($9), Piedmontese bagna cauda ($5), and/or many other far-flung possibilities. If a menu has a “fried” section, that’s where you’ll find me. A simple fritto misto ($12) of squid rings, head-on shrimps, and large sardines scintillates with just a squeeze of lemon. The calamari classic and the sardines are beautifully fresh and flavorful, if a bit crunchy-boned. Little artichokes ($10), their leaves browned and paper-crisp, have their own beauty. But a bagna cauda, classically a bracing powerhouse of garlic and anchovy, manages to be quite mild here, a disappointing oily dressing for radishes.

Housemade pici pasta ($18), simply seasoned with lemon zest and plenty of Parmesan, has a fine chew and excellent balance, with the citrus and the dairy coming together with delicate richness. There’s nothing delicate about the pizzoccheri ($19), a wintery baked casserole from the Swiss border, through whose bubbling cheese sauce, scattered with crisped ham, one must forage to find the buckwheat-based ribbons of pasta that reportedly form the heart of the dish. It’s delicious, but even shared it’s awfully weighty, and the subtleties of the nutty noodles and traditional bitto cheese are hard to parse from the greasy, salty goo. Bucatini ($15) seems to have earned its place on the pasta list through no particular merit. Drenched in oniony tomato sauce and larded with super-fatty chunks of guanciale — cured pig’s cheek — it’s serviceable but not special.

There are several appealing-sounding options among the main courses, but on the plate they’re often disappointing. I wound up cutting off the good parts of two hefty pieces of calf’s liver ($23) — their savory, oniony browned crusts — and leaving aside the velvety pink middles, whose fibrous striations I might have swallowed, but not the over-vinegary astringency that gave the delicate lobes the taste of marination victims. Three pieces of roast rabbit ($23) are sprinkled with aromatic fennel pollen, for a flavorful evocation of the countryside, but the cured pig fat — lardo — with which the meat cooked has little lubricating effect on its unappetizingly leathery texture. But Ms. Williams’ Sicilian meatballs ($18) followed her from Gusto, where they were just as light and saucy as they are here. Salt cod ($20), too, is a real winner; the fish is delectably flaky, smothered in faintly sweet cream sauce, seasoned with anchovies and raisins, and heaped on a rich polenta.

It wouldn’t be a McNally restaurant with fewer than a dozen desserts: They are all substantial and worth ordering, but perhaps just one for the table. Options range from Sicilian cassata ($9), an airy delicacy of frozen cream to which pistachios and orange zest give a Middle Eastern exoticism, to a moussey budino whose chocolate flavor leaps out instantaneously and lingers for a long, delectable while.

All 20 regions of Italy are represented on the lovely wine list, many by only one or two bottles, but some — big hitters like Piedmont and Tuscany — by a couple of dozen. All levels of drinking are accommodated, from food-friendly carafes and half-carafes, to well-priced rarities such as the intense Cornarea Roero Arneis ($36/half bottle), to big-ticket Barolos and barbarescos.

So far, Mr. McNally’s mock-ups of French bistros have thrived in a downtown niche where the genuine article is hard to find. But New York has no shortage of great regional Italian joints, and the comparison between those and Morandi is easy and unflattering. Much of Morandi’s devotion to breadth comes at the expense of depth. The food is fresh, but the experience tastes canned.

Morandi (211 Waverly Place at Charles Street, 212-627-7575).