Found Treasure: Incredible Under-the-Radar Bigoli Pasta

August 4, 2023 – There’s no way you’d know it was there, but once you know it is—and the truffle ravioli hits your lips—it’s difficult to forget.

Bigoli Pasta hides out on an industrial street called Orange Avenue in Sand City, California, population 328.

The service area where visitors enter (and grab a pasta box with sauce and toppings) is a narrow hallway, but the possibilities are as wide as the Pacific.

Enoe Santiago might be the one to greet you, friendly AF and eager to talk pasta, and perhaps hand you a full-strength cappuccino straight from the boutique machine to his right.

The daily ravioli offerings at Bigoli include (deep inhale) artichoke and fontina, butternut squash, spinach and ricotta, five cheeses, gorgonzola and walnut, spinach and artichoke, ricotta Parmesan, goat cheese and fresh herbs, caprese with tomato, Basil, mozzarella, mushroom and kale, porcini mushroom, portobello mushroom and ricotta, smoked salmon and chive, braised short rib, veal and spinach, roasted lamb with feta and olives, vegan roasted vegetables, brie and truffle, mushroom and truffle, lobster, shiitake mushroom and leeks, sweet potato and pecans, fava bean and buffalo ricotta, and sweet peas.

And that’s just the stuffed pasta.

The fresh egg pasta lineup includes angel hair, fettuccine, fusilli and a bunch more.There are also sauces—saffron and bolognese among them—and a half dozen gelato options in the freezer to boot.

I left with two types of ravioli, smoked salmon and chive and mushroom-truffle, for the record. Plus a bag of brown butter sage cream sauce.

Owner-operator Michele Cremonese—who locals in the know may remember as the creator of the progressive organic restaurant Basil in Carmel—gifted me with a pair of two-go boxes that are meant to be a handmade meal-for-two.

He says they’ve been part of a pandemic-generated renaissance, business wise. When restaurant commerce simmered down amid COVID, he and his team turned their attention to retail. 

Now that people are going out again, both elements of the Bigoli biz are humming. 

Last fall Bigoli celebrated 10 years in business, supplying an avalanche of restaurants and clumps of people from Fresno and other inland spots “filling their ice chests,” per Cremonsese. 

Then he adds this: “We’re still under the radar.”

Bigoli Pasta • 426 Orange Ave. Sand City • bigolifreshpasta.com.