Natalia Lepore Hagan is a foodie with flair.
Last Thursday night, Lepore Hagan, owner and founder of the Philadelphia-based Midnight Pasta Co. — an interactive dining experience where guests are taught to hand-make pasta from scratch — hosted a pop-up dinner party for over 40 people at the Springs home of her aunt, fashion designer Nanette Lepore.
And while guests at this particular pasta party weren’t actually making it themselves (this time), the evening served as a sneak peek of what’s to come next year, when Lepore Hagan will bring her pasta-making tour de force to the Hamptons for the summer season of 2026.
Midnight Pasta Co. founder Natalia Lepore Hagan hosted a dinner last week at her aunt’s home in Springs. (Photos by Emily Toy)
But Midnight Pasta Co. is so much more than a meal. A dining and demonstration experience, attendees partake in a hands-on pasta-making class led by Lepore Hagan where they’re taught to make two different shapes using a semolina and double zero flour-based dough.
Culminating in a five-course dinner prepared by a professional kitchen team, with chef Chelsea Krier at the helm, the pasta is then plated family-style and enjoyed at a large table by the participants. Since its founding just over two years ago, Lepore Hagan’s Midnight Pasta has hosted tens of dozens of pasta-making (and eating) events throughout Philadelphia and beyond, with the pasta also readily available for purchase at a handful of local retailers in the Philly area.
While her small batch, hand-formed pasta company was originally started in the City of Brotherly Love, Lepore Hagan’s hand-made pasta journey really began when she was living and working in another prominent city: Manhattan.
Full of pasta-bility
Originally from Ohio, Lepore Hagan moved to Manhattan in 2012 to pursue a career on stage. After a long day of dance classes and auditions, she would hand-make pasta, a skill she learned from her beloved grandfather, for her family members and housemates to enjoy. When the COVID-19 pandemic put the pause on her nearly decade-long singing and dancing career, she started making cooking videos on social media during lockdown, creatively blending her passion for both pasta and performance together.
With her acting career on hold, pasta, and the art of making it, began to be a prominent part of her life. Lepore Hagan attended and graduated from the Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in 2022 and founded her company, Midnight Pasta, named for all those late-night pasta dishes she had made for her family.
Soon after, she and her husband, now deceased, left New York and traveled to Philadelphia, where he was originally from. She quickly fell hard for the Quaker City and all the culinary possibilities in it. While the pandemic was in the rearview mirror, Lepore Hagan says, “it was a time when people were looking for connection,” noting a large number were heading into their own at-home kitchens to try their hand at creating their own comfort foods.
An antipasti hour included cocktails and snacks for guests to enjoy. (Photos by Emily Toy)
“I saw there was a hole in the market,” she says. “People were falling back in touch with their own kitchens. They wanted to be sitting around a table, sharing things, looking for an escape. People crave that.”
Taking the tour to the Hamptons
A visitor to the East End for most of her life, Lepore Hagan’s Hamptons debut last week was an intimate alfresco affair that celebrated her family’s rich epicurean traditions.
“My grandparents brought handmade pasta-making to Ohio from Italy and now, I get to teach it in Philadelphia,” she says, when addressing the crowd of 40 people or so on the front lawn of her Aunt Nanette’s East End home. “I’ve taught so far, in the past year and a half, 3,000 people. We’re going to bring it all around the country. This is the plan, but we’re starting it here tonight, in Nanette’s back yard, making pasta. We’ve done all that for you.”
Upon arrival to the Hamptons popup dinner, guests were beckoned to a stone outdoor deck perched over a large, grassy yard. A small bar set-up contained cans of single-serving spritzes, bottles of prosecco and bright-green “Garden Party” cocktails, while another table held plates of antipasti: briney olives drenched in oil, pieces of prosciutto, quartered figs, bookended by a large metal bucket of bottled Peroni. Anchored toward the back of the table was Lepore Hagan’s pasta-making machine and pasta drying rack.
About 40 people attended last week’s alfresco pasta party at a private residence in Springs. (Photos by Emily Toy)
Once seated at the long, red and white checker-clothed dining table, guests were greeted with homemade focaccia and drizzles of Bellmille olive oil. Next came a local heirloom tomato and grilled peach salad with prosciutto, basil and burrata, followed by charred broccoli with focaccia croutons in a lemon caesar dressing. After came the piece de resistance: handmade fettuccini with slow-roasted pomodoro, garlic, basil and freshly grated parmesan. The meal ended with dessert — a square of pecan and walnut shortbread paired with a small, tulip-shaped glass of homemade limoncello (either nonalcoholic or fully loaded).
“Once again, Midnight Pasta was born around the table in my family’s house, we were always sharing food, sharing experiences, sharing love and sharing life with people that you maybe haven’t met before, a stranger,” Lepore Hagan says. “So, if you haven’t met someone, you’re sitting next to them, tonight is a perfect chance for you to just make a new friend, because tonight, when you sit at this table, you are all family. You’re our family.”
