Some diners will stay away, feeling that Mr. Bastianich has not sufficiently atoned. I understand this, but I am also interested in the way employees may be treated at the restaurant now and in the future. Here, there is reason to hope. Among other human-resources reforms, employees can now report complaints about owners or corporate officers to an independent investigative firm with the power to refer cases to outside counsel. As part of the restructuring, Melissa Rodriguez, who has been the executive chef of Del Posto since 2017, was made a partner in the restaurant, along with Jeff Katz, now the managing partner. A new pastry chef, Georgia Wodder, was appointed last spring.

Del Posto is, with the possible exception of Aquavit, the grandest and most expensive restaurant in New York where women are in charge of everything you eat, starting with the miniature saffron waffle rolled like a cannoli and stuffed at one tiny end with taleggio and at the other with fennel pesto, and ending with the prosecco marshmallow tucked into the wooden drawer of a custom-made cheese grater.

The cooking is more subdued now. The kitchen is not seen as a beacon of innovation the way it used to be, perhaps because Ms. Rodriguez is less interested than Mr. Ladner was in feats of technical derring-do like 100-layer lasagnas. She gets her effects by following old Italian templates and putting them together so elegantly that they seem to light up from inside. There’s an honesty to her approach — she doesn’t try to shoot out all the lights by supercharging dishes with fat — but it’s not the kind of peasant simplicity people usually mean when they talk about honesty in Italian food. It’s a sophisticated honesty.

You know chicken cacciatore, of course. Ms. Rodriguez’s version is made from guinea hen breast, roasted until the skin crackles like parchment. What would be the body of the stew is now a sauce; the tomato, celery and onion in it come through distinctly. Occupying a little sidecar is a pressed puck of braised leg meat under a single, Roman-style gnocco, a small featherbed of semolina held together by eggs, milk and cheese. One side has been broiled so hard it is nearly burned, which seems like a mistake at first, but turns out to supply the bit of campfire that this hunter’s stew needs. It has to be far more complicated to prepare than the cacciatore at your neighborhood Italian restaurant, but it seems simpler, pared to essentials, and wonderful in every bite.