Visiting Costa's Pasta was the equivalent of being the kid at Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

I wanted it all.

A dedicated pastaphile since my childhood, I almost quivered as I watched pounds and pounds of freshly made linguini, ravioli and farfalle fall from the blades of the made-in-Italy equipment in the production rooms.

The chili linguini, cilantro linguini and jalapeno linguini were destined for a venerable Midtown restaurant, but William Costa, operations manager for the 26-year-old family-owned pasta company in Kennesaw, kindly made some extra for me to take home.

For those like me who adore fresh pasta, making the trek to find this hidden gem of a pasta factory tucked in the far back end of a warehouse complex off of Cobb Parkway is worth the trip.

Every week Costa's turns out around 1,800 pounds of fresh pasta for wholesale clients and retail customers. Much of it ends up served in distinguished restaurants across the metro area. Caterers also are good customers, but Costa's has recently started to build up its retail trade, too.

While the more common egg-dough noodle shapes and cheese-filled manicotti and raviolis are big sellers, the company makes hundreds of pasta flavors and shapes, ravioli and tortellini. And often Costa's will get special requests from creative chefs for something more sophisticated.

"We do a lot in small batches for those who want something a little different," William said.

If there are overruns of the more exotic items, the extras are packaged up and put out front for sale in the freezer case for lucky walk-in customers. In addition to the standard offerings, on a recent day there was duck and saffron ravioli, Gorgonzola tortellini and chicken tortellini sharing space with boxes of lemon pepper linguini, eggplant Parmesan and double meat lasagna. If you're really fortunate, some of Costa's signature striped ravioli or farafalle will be available.

If you don't see what you want, ask what might be available in the back warehouse. Or call 24 to 48 hours in advance and put an order in, either for items from their regular line or something out of the ordinary, like seafood lasagna with cream sauce or squid ink farfalle ("It tastes like an ocean breeze, like the air at the fishing docks," Williams said). They're happy to concoct whatever your tastes dictate.

All of Costa's retail items are vacuum sealed and frozen as soon as they come off the line so the moisture is retained. The pastas, dropped into boiling, salted water and cooked within two to three minutes, are as tender and fresh-tasting as the day they were made. The dinners, made in Costa's kitchen from scratch, can be microwaved but are much better defrosted, then baked in a conventional oven.

True, this is not artisanal pasta in the truest sense, as the dough is formed by machine rather than by hand. But ingredients such as the semolina and durum wheat flours and the imported Parmesan and Romano cheeses are all high quality and no unwanted chemicals or preservatives go into the finished product. All meats, sauce and vegetables are cooked on premises.

You mustn't leave without a pound or two of William's Italian sausage, which he grinds fresh, seasons and stuffs into natural casings. Because the meat is not ground too fine, the sausage has a firm texture pleasing to the bite. It's the best of its kind that I've found since we moved to the metro area.

The Costa family didn't start out to be pasta makers extraordinaire. Company founders Mary and Joseph Costa came to the business after he had a successful corporate career and Mary, who has a degree in education, had two sons, William and older brother Joe. It wasn't until Joseph brought home a commercial pasta machine from Italy and began experimenting in his basement that the idea to start a pasta business was born.

Joseph, whose antecedents are Sicilian, had fallen in love with food as a youngster.

"His mother was a seamstress and the family lived above the shop. He and his brothers took turns doing the cooking. He loved to cook," Mary said.

Growing up, she had made raviolis and pasta with her grandmother, who rolled out the dough by hand. When it reached the desired degree of thinness, it was cut into strands with a chitarra, a frame strung with music wire said to have originated in the Abruzzo region of Italy.

"I would catch the pasta as it was cut and lay it over broomstick handles until we had supper," Mary recalled.

Their first pasta shop was in the East Lake shopping center in east Cobb. As the business grew they bought their warehouse in Kennesaw and relocated. Son Joe, a chef instructor at the International Culinary Institute at the Art Institute of Atlanta, helps out with recipes and flavor profiles for new products.

In season, the Costas peddle their pasta at the Marietta and Riverside farmer's markets. "We almost always sell out," William said.

Prices reflect the products' premium nature but are still low enough to be reasonable. Egg or whole wheat fettuccini, linguini and angel hair, for example, are $8 for a two-pound box. Manicottis are $12 for 16 of the filled pasta rolls. Dinners for two, such as stuffed shells and meat or vegetable lasagna, run $7 to $9; bigger trays are $17 to $23.