Calling a New York restaurant “Italian” does not tell you very much anymore. It can mean pizza, red sauce, crudo, a tasting menu or a bowl of cacio e pepe priced like an entrée. Rezdôra starts by being more specific.

Chef Stefano Secchi’s Flatiron restaurant concentrates on Emilia-Romagna and its pasta traditions. Even the name points in that direction: a rezdôra is the household figure traditionally associated with rolling pasta by hand. The restaurant has earned considerable acclaim, including a Michelin star, but the regional focus is more useful to understanding it than the awards.

The menu follows through. Gnocco fritto, gramigna with sausage ragù in bianco and filled pastas place the restaurant in a particular part of Italy rather than an imaginary country assembled from everybody’s favorite dishes. Pasta is not an obligatory middle course here. It is the reason for the restaurant.

That concentration gives Rezdôra discipline. It does not have to satisfy every expectation a New York diner might bring to an Italian restaurant. The cooking can be generous and recognizable while remaining geographically precise.

New York has a long history of turning regional Italian cooking into a single category and then rediscovering the distinctions it erased. Rezdôra belongs to the latter tradition. Its appeal is not that it has uncovered a secret Italy. It is that it takes one part of Italy seriously enough to leave the rest alone.