For Natalia Lepore Hagan, noodling over pasta isn’t just a personal culinary passion. It’s how generations of her family have connected — and she wants to help you nurture the same delicious bonds.
Last August, Lepore Hagan, founder and owner of the Philadelphia-based Midnight Pasta Co. — an interactive dining experience in which guests are taught to hand-make pasta from scratch and then enjoy it in a sit-down, family-style meal — hosted a private pop-up dinner party for over 40 people at the Springs home of her aunt, fashion designer Nanette Lepore. This summer, she’ll be rolling out more.
“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 [who] you maybe haven’t met before, a stranger,” Lepore Hagan says.
Here in the Hamptons, fresh pasta is rather ubiquitous given the ample arsenal of high-quality restaurants scattered across the area. But being able to learn how to make it yourself, and connect over the process of making and eating it, is much more of a niche, hard-to-access endeavor. That is, until now…
Filling the Knead
Pasta making is rooted in tradition. A favorite among novice cooks and professional chefs alike, the culinary staple, born from a simple mixture of flour, water and sometimes eggs, has ancient origins.
Pasta’s history can be traced through many cultures and continents — from Europe to Asia to Africa to the Middle East — reaching back thousands of years. While it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when and where it was first created, the story of pasta really takes shape in Italy, where there’s archeological evidence for its existence in the Etruscan civilization as early as the fourth century B.C.
For Midnight Pasta founder (and prolific pasta maker) Natalia Lepore Hagan, noodling around isn’t just a source of sustenance, it’s the life of the dinner party. (Photo credit: Eric Striffler)
As a culinary art form, pasta truly flourished during the Renaissance period, ultimately becoming a key component at the heart of Italian cuisine. Nowadays, eating fresh pasta (and the process of making it) is widely regarded as an artisanal experience.
“My grandparents brought handmade pasta making to Ohio from Italy and now I get to teach it in Philadelphia,” Lepore Hagan said to the crowd of eager diners on the front lawn of her aunt’s home at last summer’s party in Springs. “I’ve taught so far, in the past year and a half, well over 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.”
A visitor to the East End for most of her life, Lepore Hagan’s unofficial Hamptons debut was marked by a uniquely intimate alfresco affair that celebrated her family’s rich epicurean traditions.
At the dinner, guests were beckoned to a stone outdoor deck perched over a large, grassy yard. A small bar set-up contained cans of single-serve spritzes, bottles of Mionetto prosecco and bright green “Garden Party” signature cocktails crafted by Midnight Pasta’s beverage director, Taylor Rand. Another table held platters of antipasti: briny olives drenched in olive oil, ribbons of prosciutto and quartered figs, all of them bookended by a large metal bucket overflowing with icy bottles of Peroni.
Anchored toward the back of the table was a hand-cranked pasta-making machine accompanied by a wooden pasta-drying rack. With classic and familiar Italianesque songs playing in the background, a bubbly, black-and-white polka dot pantsuit-wearing Lepore Hagan bounced back and forth between demonstrating her pasta-making abilities and chatting with guests.
Once everyone gathered collectively at a long dining table covered in a red and white checkered tablecloth, they 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 that was the pezzo forte: just-made fettuccini with slow-roasted pomodoro, garlic, basil and freshly grated Parmesan prepared by a professional staff. The meal ended with dessert: a square of pecan and walnut shortbread paired with a small, tulip-shaped glass of homemade limoncello (offered either nonalcoholic or fully loaded).
For Lepore Hagan, gathering around food isn’t just about eating; it’s an art. “Midnight Pasta was born around the table of my family’s house,” she says. “We were always sharing food, sharing experiences, sharing love and sharing life.” (Photo credit: Eric Striffler)
And while guests at this particular party didn’t actually make the pasta themselves (this time, anyway), the evening served as a sneak peek of what was to come, both in expanding skills and community.
“If you haven’t met someone and you’re sitting next to them, tonight is a perfect chance for you to just make a new friend,” Lepore Hagan offered, “because tonight, when you sit at this table, you are all family. You’re our family.”
Playing with Your Food
For a foodie with flair like Lepore Hagan, Midnight Pasta Co. is much more than a meal.
Originally from Ohio, she moved to Manhattan in 2012 to pursue a career on stage. After a long day of dance classes and auditions, Lepore Hagan 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 pressed pause on her nearly decade-long singing and dancing career, she began making cooking videos on social media during lockdown, creatively blending her passion for both pasta and performance.
With her acting career on hold, pasta, and the art of making it, became a prominent part of her life. Lepore Hagan graduated from the Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in 2022 and founded her company, Midnight Pasta Co. — named for all those late-night dishes she had made as a struggling performer.
Soon after, she and her late husband, Sean Michael Sweeney, left New York and traveled to Philadelphia, where he was from originally. She quickly fell hard for the Quaker City and all its culinary possibilities. Although the pandemic was now mostly in the rearview mirror, Lepore Hagan says, “it was a time when people were looking for connection.” She notes that a large number were still staying home, trying their hand at creating comfort foods.
“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.”
Full of pasta-bility
Fast-forward to now: Lepore Hagan already has her first ticketed public pasta party event in the Hamptons under her belt. Last month, she and her team hosted a wine tasting and dinner party at Wölffer Estate Vineyard in Sagaponack, where she once again led a pasta-making demonstration later prepared by her team, led by executive chef Chelsea Krier.
From alfresco dinner parties at private residences, seen here at Lepore Hagan’s aunt Nanette Lepore’s home last summer, to events like this past spring’s pasta-making (and eating) bonanza at Wolffer Estate Vineyard, the pasta princess is bringing her inclusive brand of gathering to the Hamptons all summer long. (Photo credit: Eric Striffler)
“We really want to make this work in the Hamptons this summer,” Lepore Hagan says of her by-hand pasta-making party format. “And doing this at Wölffer was my dream. The fact that we landed this one… wow. That really rocks.”
Designed to offer the public a taste of what she and her team hope will become a summer-long Hamptons tour of at-home pasta-making classes, not to mention delicious entertainment, May’s dinner at Wölffer — similar in style to the very first party held at her aunt’s home in Springs — was an opportunity for members of the public to preview all that Midnight Pasta Co. has to offer.
“We didn’t want people to think they had to put all of their eggs in one basket and pay us all this money up-front before really seeing what it was like,” Lepore Hagan says of last month’s event. “Instead, you could pay for two tickets and sit and experience it and then say, ‘Okay, actually, I really do want to do this at my house.’”
Since its founding about four years ago, Lepore Hagan’s Midnight Pasta Co. has hosted over a dozen pasta-making events each month, predominantly at BLDG39 at the Arsenal, an industrial-style historic event space in Philly that has a 2,600-square-foot open floor plan with indoor and outdoor capabilities. However, she says, the business model has shifted slightly toward doing more dinner parties in people’s homes.
“We do a lot of home events where we come in; we bring everything with us so we can teach the pasta class and do a dinner party in people’s houses,” Lepore Hagan says. “That’s what we’ve been doing more of in Philadelphia that we’ve been loving, and I think it would really work in the Hamptons.”
To book a personal pasta party, visit midnightpasta.com.
