By age 30, Andrew Carmellini had cooked in more multi-starred restaurants than most people ever even visit – Lespinasse, Le Cirque, San Domenico. When he left Cafe Boulud last year after half a decade, he left as the James Beard Foundation’s Best New York Chef. Last month, he opened his new venture, A Voce, amid understandably acute expectations. The restaurant doesn’t strain to impress, but it satisfies the anticipation all the same.

A Voce’s idiom is Italian and moderately upscale, though not to a Lespinasse degree. Entrees top out at $29, but the wine list is prepared for splurges, with 20 pages of fine print and more than a few four-figure bottles. The cooking applies a fine hand to Italian tradition, giving fusty favorites like chicken cacciatore ($23) and braised tripe ($19) a polish, with superior, fresh ingredients and a light touch.

An antipasto of four duck meatballs ($13) epitomizes the starters: Its garlicky sausage flavor is familiar, but elevated a notch or three.The duck, finely ground with little visible pieces of liver, exudes freshness and complexity; it’s topped with sweet macerated cherries and served on a delicate root puree. Great ingredients bring out the best in a trio of cold antipasti ($13), too: lushly creamy buffalo mozzarella topped with herbs and oil; artichoke hearts slathered with strong pesto; and tart, grilled, tomato-sauced eggplant slices.

For the most part, Mr. Carmellini has left Cafe Boulud’s pinnacles of refinement uptown. A Voce’s daintiest dish might be a starter of marinated salmon sashimi ($16), but even those are stolidly grounded by earthy bell pepper pieces. The restaurant’s high points come, rather, in broad strokes, like a big bowl of plain but sumptuous Sardinian ricotta ($12) served with a spoon and a sheaf of hot grilled bread.

The menu evolves constantly, and a section labeled “del mercato” (“from the market”) features up-to-the-minute seasonal ingredients like young vegetables and beautiful fish. Those selections are supplemented by recited specials that are presumably too fresh to make it to the daily-printed menu. One night featured a scintillating black sea bass filet ($29), its vividly latticed skin covering moist, rich flesh. It shared a brightgreen garlic and basil broth with clams, mussels, fingerling potatoes, and sweet, finespun meatballs made of shrimp: an apotheosis of Italian seafood. A couple of days later it was gone.

As spring sets in, the market menu features pungent ramps in a plate of spaghetti ($14 appetizer/$25 main) set off by porky strips of American-made speck ham. But the rest of the menu hardly lacks in freshness. In fact, one of the keys to Mr. Carmellini’s success here is his ability to amalgamate “fresh” and “hearty,” two adjectives of culinary praise that are often antithetical.

Tripe ($19), a Tuscan staple, is a little too earthy for New York restaurant tables; al though it’s a prominent fixture on A Voce’s menu, the waiter paused to make sure I knew what I was asking for when I ordered it. The chewy, unmistakable organ meat is stewed in strips, with hints of tomato and hot pepper, and meaty Tuscan beans. The menu gives the dish the epithet “primavera,” and while a few slices of carrot and fennel may not qualify the wintry stew for that description, its distinct, unexpected delicateness almost does.

Coarse lamb bolognese ($24) pulls off a similar finesse: Despite itself, the hearty, savory meat sauce thrills with lightness born of abundant fresh mint and cool ricotta. The housemade pappardelle, wide and toothsome, with appealingly pinked edges, provides an excellent foundation, even as it drowns in a deluge of the terrific ragu. Similarly, a strewing of wondrous fresh peas, fresh basil, and fresh wild mushrooms invigorates a sliced duck breast, savory skin give dark counterpoint to the vegetables’ woodsy exuberance.

April Robinson’s desserts come in a fine range of weight classes. A gorgeous coppa ($11) of tangerine ice, grapefruit, and sweet vermouth refreshes and stimulates; a glazed and roasted pineapple ring ($10), served with aniseed gelato, has a bit more sugary heft, and a luxe tiramisu in a tumbler ($10) is shareably dense.

Wines by the glass include a dazzling rose champagne by Montaudon ($22), charismatic in both its color and its berryish flavor; and an organic barbaresco ($19) from Piero Busso, whose sturdy elegance suits it for the menu’s broad dynamic range. The by-the-bottle list harbors unexplored depths. Sommelier Olivier Flosse, another Boulud alumnus, offers straightforward guidance.

Mr. Carmellini plans to introduce sophisticated sidewalk dining out on 26th Street, but for now the modern, oblong space inside the restaurant suffices, although its prim gloss imposes a certain stiffness that contradicts the easy warmth of the food. The room gets uncomfortably loud – but the chef’s ability shines through it all, consummately down-to-earth but leaving the impression that he could reach the stars with little effort.

A Voce, 41 Madison Ave. at 26th Street, 212-545-8555.