At my first dinner, I went for the staples that had gotten me through many wintry nights: minestrone and spaghetti with tomato sauce. The clear vegetable soup ($8) had recognizable green beans, tomatoes, and other vegetable chunks, but the base was so watery and dismally dull that it stayed untouched after the first hopeful slurps. The unpleasantly slippery spaghetti ($15) was a thin cut, more like spaghettini, and the tomato sauce was distinctly tinny.

Those building blocks need to be set right before the rest can improve. Once that sauce is fixed up with a bit of substance, the pastas and pizzas will get better, too. (The thin pizza crusts also need help: They're tough, and taste of under-risen flatbread.) The one risotto I tried, served beside osso buco ($29), had so little flavor that if it hadn't been colored orange—theoretically from saffron—I'd have had no idea what was supposed to be in it.

But enough on the negatives. Certainly Toscano's two main rooms were crowded during my three dinners, and several dishes came as happy surprises. Best were the gnocchi quattro formaggi ($17), big pillowy dumplings in a creamy but not overbearing sauce. I don't remember these being this delicate and satisfying at the old Toscano, and I can easily imagine subbing them for my old default spaghetti pomodoro. Although the penne strascicate ($16) had more of that slippery pasta, the tinny notes of the tomato sauce were softened by good beef sauce, like bolognese without the milk or pork. It's another dish that could be a regular for any pasta lover.

Main courses were more reliable, reversing the usual Italian-restaurant MO. The veal for the osso buco was bland and not as spoon-tender as I would have liked, but the tomato-vegetable sauce was bright and the portion huge. You get similar value from the other equally large and well-priced meat entrées, such as the gigantic double-cut pork chop ($24) with the notably good mashed potatoes, which have honest potato flavor and really taste homemade. The scottadito di agnello ($30), grilled frenched lamb chops you pick up with your fingers, was like the pork: a relative deal for a lot of meat, and with a pleasantly mild flavor.

Many diners are ordering the restaurant's vegetable dishes, Cacciagrani told me, and the menu is generous with them. The standout was eggplant parmigiana ($14), light but substantial enough to make a main course, and with plenty of tomato sauce mellowed by cheese and enlivened by a judicious amount of garlic. It was the fought-over dish at one dinner.

Fish is better avoided, based on two of the four main courses I tried: sea bass and baby artichokes ($28) in an oily, garlicky sauce, and cod with cherry tomatoes ($26) in another poorly executed sauce, with domineering dried herbs and garlic. The accompanying oven-roasted peas were nice, though, showing the kitchen's sure touch with vegetables. That's true Italian.

So is the unexceptional dessert list (all $8)—Tuscans aren't big on desserts—with a just-okay crème caramel, and zabaglione with sliced strawberries. The server-touted ricotta tart was dull, with a soggy crust, and the biscotti, something Tuscans actually do have after dinner, were stale—but from a good Florentine-origin box, and served with the delicious Tuscan dessert wine vin santo, biscotti's perfect dipping partner.

D'Alessandro and Cacciagrani run an energetic, unpretentious staff whose enthusiasm for wine is frat-boy fun. In fact, the whole place is far livelier these days, and you'll probably see someone you know or want to do business with. I'm glad an old friend has been given new life. Now what Toscano needs is a visionary chef with a true Tuscan touch—old or young, crusty or ingratiating—to dip a supervisory finger into the sauces before they leave the kitchen.