Any time Fresno gets a new restaurant with a menu that doesn’t include five types of burgers on it feels like cause for celebration. That’s not to say that we don’t have some great restaurants with vast burger selections, or that we don’t love a great burger; sometimes it just feels like there’s a gap in the market around here between casual family eateries and fussy overpriced ones.
That’s part of what makes Jimmy Pardini’s restaurants feel like such a welcome part of the local culinary scene. At The Annex Kitchen (opened in 2015), Annesso Pizzeria (2021), and now Willow Osteria (2025), Pardini specializes in fresh pastas and wood-fired pizzas, serving food that stands out as “good,” and not just “good for Fresno.” It feels like he’s broadening the scope of the kinds of restaurants that can thrive here, without pandering to an outsider’s assumptions of what we already like, or imposing their conceptions of what we’ll think is fancy.
Pasta and pizza aren’t fancy, really, they’re just… hard to do well. Distinguishing yours from the next guy’s takes a certain amount of dedication – some might say obsession. It’d be easy to put a hand-made fettuccine or pappardelle on a menu (flat pasta shapes generally being the easiest to make fresh), and then fill out the rest of the pasta section with dry macaroni, paired with “upscale” ingredients, like shrimp or shellfish. Certainly no one would complain. Linguini with clams didn’t become ubiquitous because it isn’t good…