
Chef Luciano Del Signore
Three-time James Beard Award Nominee
Bigalora’s founder and chef Luciano Del Signore was born in the United States after his parents emigrated from Abruzzo, Italy in the mid-20th century. Luciano grew up working in the kitchen of his parents’ restaurant, the excellent neighborhood Italian cucina Fonte d’Amore in Livonia, Michigan. As a teenager Luciano began developing his cooking talents both at “The Fonte” and during long family trips back to his parents’ hometown in Italy.
In 2002 Luciano opened Bacco Ristorante in Southfield, a fine-dining Italian restaurant with an emphasis on inventive, contemporary dishes. Over the years Bacco has won numerous “Restaurant of the Year” awards and Chef Luciano has had multiple James Beard Award nominations. After establishing Bacco’s success, Luciano began experimenting with natural-yeast sourdough bread recipes to see if he could reproduce an authentic Neopolitan pizza dough. In his research he discovered a simple recipe for “biga,” an ancient Italian starter made from wheat flour, water, and naturally-occurring yeast. This led to the opening of the first Bigalora Wood Fired Cucina in Southfield. The concept was to provide his friends, family, and Bacco customers a more casual dining experience while retaining Bacco’s standards for clean, authentic cooking. With the success of the first Bigalora, Chef has developed the restaurant into a repeatable business that now feeds several metro Detroit communities.