The Healing Power of Pasta: Graduate Natalia Lepore Hagan’s Inspiring Story

TRANSCRIPT

Kirk Bachmann: Hello everyone, my name is Kirk Bachmann, and welcome back to The Ultimate Dish!

Today, we’re thrilled to re-welcome Natalia Lepore Hagan, a 2022 Escoffier graduate with honors and the founder of Midnight Pasta Co., a vibrant pasta company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Since earning her culinary degree, Natalia has been on a mission to bring people together through the prolific art of pasta-making.

Hosting unforgettable pasta parties and interactive experiences across the city, she has already taught over a thousand people the craft—and the number continues to grow.

Natalia’s culinary journey is deeply rooted in family tradition. She grew up making pasta alongside her grandfather, cherishing the recipes and techniques passed down through generations of her Italian heritage.

Now, through her work at Midnight Pasta Co., she’s sharing that same joy and tradition with her community, one pasta party at a time. That’s right; one pasta party at a time.

But that’s not all. Natalia’s story is one of creativity, resilience, and passion. From her early dreams of performing on stage to navigating the challenges of launching a business through personal grief, she has turned her love for pasta-making into a beacon of healing and connection.

So get ready—this conversation promises a heartfelt exploration of family, tradition, innovation, and the incredible impact of food experiences in today’s culinary world.

And there she is. Good morning!

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Hi. Good morning, Chef.

Kirk Bachmann: I’m a little out of breath after that.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: That was beautiful!

Kirk Bachmann: Right! I don’t know if I’m too excited or not excited enough. I rushed through that intro. So, so excited to chat with you, but before we get into all of that, set the stage. You’re in Philly. I love the past book above your head and the two machines. It’s like I’m too excited. Where are you? Are you in the home office?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: This is my new apartment that I moved into in February. It has become my home office because my apartment is only a gigantic kitchen and a bedroom. I just need a big kitchen.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s all you need. Do you have a big table in the kitchen?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I have my great-grandfather’s table.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that. So many memories. So cool.

We’ve got so much to talk about. For our guests, in case our guests don’t remember or [haven’t] known, Natalia’s no stranger to The Ultimate Dish. She was actually on Episode 95 with some of her colleagues and friends and misfits, appropriately called Les Misfits, a group of like-minded Escoffier grads who still meet up today, as you told me earlier, post-graduation. If you haven’t checked out that episode, please do listen to it.

Can we talk a little bit about the Misfits? Is that appropriate? How’s everybody doing?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Absolutely. Everybody is doing amazing. Everyone is still all over the country, which is really cool. Everyone still texts on a group text that we have when we have big things happening in our lives. Maybe there’s a new baby, new fun culinary experiences. Sometimes it’s just, “Look at this gorgeous charcuterie board that I made,” and we send it. We’re all still in touch.

Built on Family Tradition

Kirk Bachmann: I love that. Food is love. Food is language. Food is connection. We probably need to do part deux, bring everybody together a year later. That’s on my to-do list for sure.

Let’s set the stage a little bit more. This is not about the Misfits. Sorry team. This is only about you today. You grew up in a large Italian family. I can only imagine. I grew up in a European family as well. Being around the table – your grandfather’s table – around the stove, the kitchen, that’s where your upbringing took place. What did a typical family party look like? Or was that every night at dinner? Tell us about your grandfather a little bit more, and how he inspired your passion for making pasta.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I would love to do that. My company, Midnight Pasta, is based solely around the way that my family parties and the way that they host. They experience food together.

Kirk Bachmann: And they know you call them partiers, right? I hope they know that. Okay. They’re good.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Yeah. I’ve had many family friends come to one of my pasta classes and one of my pasta parties and say, “This is it. This is what the Lepore family” – that’s my mother’s family, the Italian side of us. They say, “This is it. You managed to bottle up your family’s party experience and gift it to all these new people that would never have experienced it before.”

Kirk Bachmann: So well said. What part of Italy, primarily?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: My great-grandparents, my mom’s father’s parents, came from the Abruzzi region of Italy in a town called Sulmona. I’ve had the chance to visit and meet some of my cousins that live there. Along with them [when they were] traveling to Ohio, they brought pasta recipes, all of our food recipes that have been passed down generationally. My great-grandmother taught my grandpa how to make pasta, and he taught all of his kids, and he taught me and my brother and my cousin.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that. I love that. And I love how your voice almost gets emotional when you’re able to tell that story of where they’re from. It’s also important because every region’s different. Similar, but different. Two weeks ago, my cousin Freddy who lives in Germany came over. Just for a moment in time, you just stop and you listen and you talk and you recall. The memories are beautiful of the cousins and stuff. I got chills when I heard that. I’m not going to interrupt anymore. Go for it.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: No, that’s okay. It’s a beautiful family that I was very lucky to be raised in. We care a lot about tradition, and we care a lot about food and fun. The experience of making food together and then sitting down together and eating it.

Our Christmas was always an open door to as many people as we could fit at the table. It was the seven-fish dinner. We would make pasta for thirty people. It was all day long. The pasta-makers always get a shot of whiskey in the middle of the day. I love that.

We have a humongous meal, and we dance, and everybody sings. I come from a family of artists. My grandfather who taught me to make pasta was an abstract expressionist and a professor of art. I grew up in vibrant colors. The food had to be as vibrant as his beautiful paintings on the walls. Everyone wanted to tell a story. Stand up, write a poem. Give a speech. Sing a song. Do a dance. Someone came in with a piano or an accordion and everyone was dancing around with bells. That was the way that I was raised, experiencing food. I think it’s so special.

A Grandfather’s Reverence

Kirk Bachmann: You talked about the big table and everybody piling in. It doesn’t even matter how many guests show up because you make room for them. There’s always another chair or a lap. I love that.

Weave your grandfather into all of that and how he inspired your passion. Because it’s clear it’s not just a skill, it’s a passion. It’s in your DNA. Talk a little bit about that.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: In my family when you are old enough to reach the table, you are old enough to make pasta. It’s your induction into the family.

Kirk Bachmann: And before that, you’re under the table eating the pasta as it falls.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Absolutely. Yes.

He was brilliant, and he was strict, and he cared a lot about pasta. I remember when I veered off a little bit when I was about twenty-four, and I made a really bad homemade pasta meal for my friends. I was so embarrassed.

I went back to Ohio, and I said, “Grandpa, you need to yell at me. I need a little bit more guidance from you. I need to hear that kind of Old World, rustic passion about pasta.” That’s kind of where I got all of my passion for pasta-making. It was through him. It was watching his hands, the way that he touches the pasta with reverence.

I care so much about it, and I talk to my employees about it, too. We collect the pasta that people make in our classes. We touch it in a certain way. We let them put it on our platter, and we thank them for offering this gift to us because this is art that they’ve created. This is something that they made with their hands. It shouldn’t just be flippantly thrown around. We should thank them for this beautiful thing that they’ve done. It matters how we touch it when it’s all together. It matters that we’re not grabbing it with our fingers or mushing it together. It matters that we give it air, and we give it life, and we let it dance. And we let it live through the next step, which is taking it into our kitchen and saucing it, and then presenting it again, ceremoniously, down to everyone the beautiful thing that they’ve made.

Kirk Bachmann: The pageantry with which you speak is very theatrical. It feels like I’m coming to the show. I love the word “reverence.” You don’t hear it enough in society today, respect for the craft. Respect for each other. Respect for the people who grew the flour that produced the pasta, so on and so forth.

It’s interesting, though, I didn’t know where you were going when you were in your twenties and you got in trouble. Most people in their twenties, they’ve driven a car into something or spent too much money, even worse, but you made a bad pasta dish.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I was so mad at myself. I think about it all the time.

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my gosh. I sense that you didn’t get in too much trouble growing up.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: No.

A Cultural and Culinary Mosaic

Kirk Bachmann: With the strict grandpa. My wife’s from Ohio, and one of our dearest friends is in Huron, Ohio, Chef’s Garden, Farmer Lee Jones. You probably saw an episode or two of his when you were a student. Tell us how being brought up in Ohio for a period of time influenced your passion for not only culinary endeavors but also the performing arts. Again, where in Ohio?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio. It’s Northeast Ohio. It is a wild town. I love it. It’s small. It has a lot of history in the mob, which is crazy. Great museums, lots of artists, and very culturally diverse. With the food aspect and the culinary aspect of Youngstown, Ohio, I grew up going to Greek festivals, Italian festivals, German festivals, Austrian food. I ate Lebanese food, and Puerto Rican food. Dance halls. We would go and eat Puerto Rican food, and we had many friends in all these different cultures. Every summer, there is festival on festival on festival, so I grew up eating so many different cultures and kinds of foods. It was really a beautiful way to grow up, and not to feel like I was just eating fast food, or french fries, or burgers – which there’s nothing wrong with that, but I was lucky enough to have that kind of experience.

And my family is a group of artists. My mother has her degree in dance. I went to school for dance as well. I started at four years old in a classical ballet school prepping for a career on Broadway, which I had for ten years, touring the country with performing Broadway shows as a dancer, singer, and actress. I had a very diverse upbringing that involved a lot of culture, food, and art.

Confident Performance

Kirk Bachmann: And you’re still on stage, right? When you think about preparing food for guests, all eyes are on you. I love that. Growing up in a performance family – acting, singing. If I could say, too, your voice is beautiful; you project well. You’re able to get your point across. Was this always part of the dream? Did you know that you had this gift? “This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to perform for others.” Again, you’re still performing for others, but take us back to that point in your life.

Interestingly enough, Natalia, we have some chef instructors, we have other people that are in the company that also came to us from the performing arts. Performing in New York, on Broadway, and then performing in front of their stove, in front of students. Take us back to that and how that all came to be. I love understanding how young people are influenced by their grandparents and their parents to pursue, much like I was – I fought it for years! My father, the pastry chef. “I’m not doing that.” But you can only fight it for so long, so walk us down that path.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Sure. My parents were very accepting of my eccentricity as a young girl. They encouraged it. When I was four years old, I was in California at a cousin’s wedding, and I got up on a balcony and sang down to the whole wedding party, “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.”

Kirk Bachmann: Oh my goodness.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I was so young, and I was so brazen and bold. At that moment, I remember being like, “This is it. This is all I want to do for the rest of my life.” Not that I had any concept of that, but there was this idea of, “Oh, this is what I’m here for.” I loved that. Everything I had went into the performing arts. Everything I did, it was always…

Kirk Bachmann: And no nerves? No nerves at all? Just impromptu, “I just happen to know the lyrics to this historic song?”

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I loved it.

Kirk Bachmann: And you’re probably going to sing a few bars today, which will really make this episode flair, but no pressure. Just bust into it whenever you want. How was that received? How was that received by the guests?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Everyone started chanting, “Evita! Evita!” So, well. It went well for me.

My parents, as well as being artists, and my dad drove trains for forty years. He was also a state representative and state senator for thirty-five years. My mother was an artist and worked for the university in the performing arts department. She ran for my father’s seat, so she was a politician as well, state representative. I grew up in a very diverse family, very liberal politicians, which was really lovely to grow up in that kind of environment.

I saw that to bring it together and to bring it back to this ability to public speak and to not have nerves or fear. I was sitting next to the mayor when I was a little girl and had to hold my own. My dad taught us to look someone in the eye and to shake their hand and say our names. I think that created in me this confidence to not be afraid to stand in the room with anybody. It could be anyone, and I wouldn’t be nervous about it. At the same time, I could perform onstage for thousands of people and not have those butterflies and nerves.

A lot of people ask me, now, when I do my pasta classes – it’s only twenty-eight people – but they say, “How do you not get nervous? How do you not get afraid that you can’t control everybody or you’re about to go up for an hour and teach them pasta with all eyes on you?” But to me it just makes sense.

The Choice to do Culinary

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. One of the best coaches I ever had years and years and years ago used to talk about preparation. Anxiety versus nervousness. He used to always say that it is completely normal to be somewhat nervous because you care. When you become anxious, that might be because you haven’t prepared, and you have every reason to be nervous to go up on stage. But when you’ve prepared, when you’ve done the work – that’s a perfect segue.

You’ve got this ability – which is a gift, like you said earlier – to speak your mind, talk with others, try to make people happy. When did this all translate into culinary and culinary education, knowing that pasta was a part of your life through your grandfather and your history with Italy? But I’m really curious, and I know that students like you love to hear this part. When did you know? Was there that moment, that catalyst, that one specific memory where you knew, “This is what I’m going to do. This is what I’m going to do. I can do a lot of other things, but this will define me”?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I feel like there were many different moments. I’m not sure if there was one specific where I said, “This is where I’m moving from one life to another.” It kind of all mixed together.

For me to decide to go to culinary school was during the pandemic because the theater world was obsolete, was gone. We couldn’t all gather into a big communal room any longer. I was in lockdown with my brother and my late husband in Queens. I just started making pasta because we were scared. I couldn’t stop making pasta. It started out with me rolling it out with a wine bottle because in my apartment, I didn’t have a rolling pin. I didn’t have my pasta machine. So I went back to the way that I would do this how I knew how to do it, and I called my grandpa.

And then I started filming it, and I started putting it on my Instagram. All of a sudden, all my friends from Ohio were like, “This is bringing me joy. This is scary, a very scary time, and this is bringing me some joy, to watch you and your partner and your brother laughing.” And we would take shots, and we would put [on] funny music, and we would drink wine. I started cooking and making more and more things happen.

Then I started loving it more and more. Then I called my grandpa, and he started giving me stories about different kinds of pastas his mom would make that my mom didn’t know about. He would go back to his childhood and start rattling off gnocchi recipes. I would be furiously writing them down and trying those. Then I started going crazier and crazier into this love.

Then one day, I posted a video, and my cutting board was sliding around. A girl said to me, “You know, you should just put a wet towel under your cutting board, and it won’t slide around.” And I got so embarrassed.

I said, “Okay. That’s it. I’m going to culinary school.”

Kirk Bachmann: The simplest tips are sometimes the most impactful. Just the simplest little thing.

This storytelling around theater and acting and singing and performing, and then cooking, pasta-making. We have to talk about New York for a bit – not far from where you are, but a big part of where you are. Can you talk a little bit about what motivated that move? I can’t remember: was that before the pandemic? Are you in New York then during the pandemic?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I was in New York through the whole pandemic, and I went through most of Escoffier through New York.

Kkirk When you were in New York. Okay.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: We had a house here in Philadelphia that we were renovating at the same time. So that’s why I really, really loved going to Escoffier because I could take my knife kit with me going back and forth from Philadelphia to New York, and I could do my lessons anywhere that I was.

New York was very influential for me. The food scene, obviously, is humongous, and I loved that I got to do my externship in New York City because I got to be the pasta maker at Lupa, which is Joe Bastianich’s restaurant.

Lessons from Escoffier

Kirk Bachmann: Just to move forward a little bit with the education piece, can you talk a little bit about the experience? Not so much the pandemic, which was really important, but that you found this place where you could – like you say, you bring your knives back and forth where you could practice what you wanted to learn, whether it was putting a wet rag under your cutting board or sanitary practices or…

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Knife skills.

Kirk Bachmann: Knife skills, pasta-making, whatever it is. Talk about that a little bit. Were there any mentors? Or valuable takeaways that stay with you?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Absolutely. When I first started with Escoffier, my first chef instructor was Chef Roberta Clare. She was the most influential person to me in my experience with Escoffier. Her story, her strength as a female in this industry, I knew it wouldn’t always be easy. She was strict and wonderful. I learned so much from her on the first day that I knew this was the exact right place for me to be.

I always say that you could get as much that you want out of Escoffier, and I got everything I could. I pulled everything out of it that I could. I think my chef instructors saw that. One chef instructor – I can’t remember who it is, and I’m sorry about it – he would have us do one plate. We had to take every single ingredient out of that plate, write it down, and say what that added to the dish. Lemon, onion, garlic, salt – why we needed every single ingredient in that dish. That was beautiful for me.

I realized that I have a very good palate, and I think that’s probably from growing up around such different kinds of cuisines and having the accessibility to it and being privileged in that way. That helps me as a chef today and every single day. I think, “Why am I putting that in there? Why am I doing that exact thing?” And I think back to that lesson.

There are so many lessons that I learned from so many different chefs. Like I said, I grabbed everything, I squeezed everything I could out of it, and I got so much. I loved every second of it.

Kirk Bachmann: That’s good advice. People should lean in and absorb everything they possibly can from any learning and experience. I love that you brought up the example of deconstructing a dish into the individual components and what those components bring from an aggregate perspective to the ultimate dish. I wanted to mention what I love about that comment. Did it help you find your voice a little bit? Your cognitive expression, your narrative of what was happening? Muscle memory is important. Technique is important, but having your own voice of what you’re preparing, do you find that that’s important as well?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Yes. Absolutely. It was huge for me because I was finding my own voice, but I was finding my own voice through the tradition of my great-grandmother. I was recreating these beautiful dishes, but I was understanding it better in this way. Why did she put the garlic in at this time? Why did she do it this way? Why do we have such a spicy palate in our family? How it matters when you put things in, where you put things in. And that helped me so much because I found it through my ancestors, and I was able to understand it more.

When I went back to my grandfather in Ohio after and during culinary school, I made him a sauce that was passed down. His memory went back to his childhood. He had this sense memory. I handed him a piece of bread dipped in sauce, and he said, “If I close my eyes, it was like you were my mother handing that to me right now.” That is so important. I don’t think without the skills that I learned at Escoffier [that] I would be able to truly recreate it based on sense memories and the memories of my childhood.

So Many Things to Do with Food

Kirk Bachmann: I’m so glad we’re recording this because we’re so going to use those last three minutes from a marketing perspective. So well said.

That leads me to an interesting question. No pressure, but you sort of reinvented yourself but never veered too far from your foundation, what was important to you. I love how you connected your grandfather into the new things you’re learning. It provided context for you in a beautiful way.

Do you have any opinion or advice to students just starting with Escoffier, halfway through Escoffier, on different innovative ways that they can – no specifics necessary. I wonder how many people start school anywhere with this dream that “I’m going to start a company called Midnight Pasta, and I’m going to party with people to make a living and make them happy and grow my business.” Are there other things that you think about, or are there things our students should be thinking about? That they don’t have to follow the traditional path of working on the line and all of that sort of stuff.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Absolutely. I think that it’s admirable and awesome and amazing to work on the line. I hated it.

Kirk Bachmann: It’s not for everyone. It’s not for everyone.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: It’s beautiful, and it’s artistic and lovely. When I was working in a basement kitchen making pasta, I said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” That was at the end of my time at Escoffier, so I hadn’t fully realized yet what my idea was going to be.

There are so many things to do with food and to do with a culinary degree. I found this. It kind of fell into who I was by bringing in my family, my theater experience, my food experience, and creating something for myself. But I think that’s my advice: you can create anything for yourself. There is always going to be a market for you if you truly believe in it.

I found a little piece and a little part of the market in Philadelphia that was missing and [that] people really want. They really want experiences, so I started creating experiences. But I work out of a commercial commissary kitchen with forty other chefs that all have different food experiences and food innovations. Some people are private chefs. A lot of people have pop-ups. They have food trucks. They have cake decorating classes. They go into people’s homes. They do Uber Eats from their kitchens. There are so many things that you can do that don’t involve the traditional, “I’m going to culinary school. I’m working on the line, working my way up until I own a restaurant and become the head chef or executive chef of said restaurant.”

There are countless possibilities, and I think I fell into mine because I just truly believed in what I’m doing. I do believe in what I’m doing and love it and have so much passion for it. And I think that anyone can just find exactly what they want if they follow their path. It seems naive and silly because of course there’s money. There’s backing. There’s a lot more that goes into that, and privilege and where you were born and where you are raised. There are many factors, but people will be out there to help you, and there are resources to find ways to create your perfect thing for you.

Midnight Pasta

Kirk Bachmann: That’s such great advice. Really, really was. It gets me excited. Everyone’s different. For me, there was nothing back a long time ago. I loved the line. I didn’t have the attention span for mise en place. I didn’t want to stand there all day long and prep. I loved a bunch of tickets. I loved being in the weeds. I loved communicating with the servers. I liked taking dinners out to the dining room myself. Everybody’s different. Everybody’s different. And I didn’t mind clean up, to be honest. I did not mind clean-up, so it all kind of worked out.

Let’s talk about a celebration of food and resilience. Let’s talk about Midnight Pasta. This is your company. You started to talk about it a little bit. You started after you graduated. I’m on your Instagram account. Can I just say, when you look at an account a lot, it pops up. It’s AI, however they do that. I see your content a lot. What I think I love the most is it just kind of makes me smile. It looks fun. It looks carefree. It looks silly, and it’s a celebration. Friends, family, loved ones. What inspired the concept? This is where students are really going to take notes. Where does this come from? If it’s a story you can’t tell – Midnight Pasta – that’s okay, too. That’s okay, too. What inspired the name, the concept, the club? How do you get into the club? Well, I know, but I want you to tell everybody else.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Wonderful. The name is actually based on a family tradition of eating pasta at midnight around my aunt’s kitchen table. Like I said, we’re partiers. We’re drinkers. We eat a lot. We want to dance until the sun comes up, and we will, but we need to eat again at midnight. That’s where everyone comes together, sits down at the table.

My aunt in New York City would text everybody when I was living in New York with her. She’d say, “All right, everyone, no matter where you are, we’re having midnight pasta on the table at midnight.” And I’d come home from a Broadway show, or my brother would come home from a rave, or my cousin would come from something. Everyone would come and meet together and eat pasta around the table. It was these few nights that really flipped into this idea of this whole family tradition of all of us sharing this experience together around the table. That’s the name.

The experience itself is a real combination of theater and food. What I loved about performing was that it was my job onstage for however many people were out on stage. Whatever they were going through in their lives, no matter what was happening in politics, in the news. Maybe they were grieving. Something happened to them; they lost their jobs. They had tickets to the theater that night, and it was my job to take them out of all of that and to bring them into a world. For two hours, they could sit and be carefree. They could enjoy a different experience or a different world. Or a celebration. Maybe something beautiful is happening in their lives and they wanted to celebrate.

I want to do that with my company. That’s what we do with Midnight Pasta. No matter what happens, you leave it at the door. When you walk in, for two hours you are in a different world. You are in what I call a 1950s American Italian dreamland. We have the music going. We have everyone smiling. It’s a performance. You’re meeting new people. I’m greeting you and figuring out how to make you feel comfortable in that moment. By the end of the night, you’re in a whole different place. That’s really important to me. That was the way that I really combined theater and food into this food experience.

Kirk Bachmann: Well said. I was actually just going to ask what the typical experience feels like, and you eloquently summarized that. [What] I’m wondering when I started thinking, and as I was listening to you, again Natalia, why are food experiences – key word, experiences – so [much] more important, so integral today for the general food scene? Why is it that people want an experience like that versus just satisfying a need to sustain life? A lot of people just eat because they have to stay alive, but people are looking for an experience, aren’t they? They are looking for something out of the ordinary. To do it at midnight is not easy.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Well, we don’t always do it at midnight. Don’t worry. The classes are from 6-8 p.m.

Kirk Bachmann: Okay. Okay. I was already jotting down. “I’m going to go to bed at six, wake up at ten.” Okay. I got you.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Don’t worry. We do have a few. I am doing an actual midnight dinner with a very cool social club here in Philadelphia called Palizzi Social Club. That’s actually at midnight, but our classes are in the middle of the day. You don’t have to worry.

Life through Grief

Kirk Bachmann: I love it. Even the idea that it might be later at night. European cultures tend to, as you know, dine and party much, much later because they sleep in the afternoon than Americans do. But I’m not ashamed to say that our entire team has been following you for a long time on social media.

We recognize, too, Natalia, and appreciate that it’s not easy to get to where you are today. Each business, each season comes with its own set of challenges. I know, for you, you’ve really had to conquer a lot. If you’re comfortable today chatting with me and sharing a little bit. You mentioned your husband earlier. It would be wonderful if you can share how you managed to build your business, your company, rebuild your life through grief. We know that loss can change the way we interpret passion and purpose. I’m curious if your love for pasta-making, your love for food experiences became this source of healing and strength during a very difficult time in your life.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Yes. Absolutely. I lost my husband last year, suddenly, tragically, and I was supposed to start my first pasta class two weeks later. Obviously, I didn’t do that. I left Philadelphia, and I thought, “I’ll never make pasta again. I’ll never cook again. I’ll never survive this at all.”

But the food community in Philadelphia – literally, people in the community – called me while I was in Ohio and said, “Come back. We’re here for you. Just come back. We’re going to do this.” It was really beautiful. So I came back, and I started really doing these classes. I was and still am grieving. I will grieve for the rest of my life. To do these classes and to bring people joy became my source of joy. Through my grief, I put everything, every ounce of me into my company.

We blew up very quickly, and a lot of people say, “How did that happen?” I honestly just say it was my grief. I just could have laid in bed all day. And I did for about two months. And then I picked myself up, and I put everything into it because Sean – was his name – loved Midnight Pasta. He loved the idea. He loved when I made him pasta. I started my company by just selling pasta out of a fish store in Philly. He was there through all of it. He helped me sell at farmers’ markets. He did it all. I wanted to do this to honor him, to honor myself – the new version of myself that I became after I lost him.

I want to be respectful of him. I never want it to become my story. He’ll never be a selling point for a ticket to a class. He’ll never be this idea to share with people to make people feel bad for me, to come and support a grieving widow. I don’t tell that story all the time, but to not say that he is the main reason that I am where I am today is a disservice to our love and to him, and to his part in Midnight Pasta.

We have an executive chef in my company who runs the kitchen while I’m teaching the pasta classes. She was his best friend and was his maid of honor at our wedding. We do a toast to him in every class. We don’t do a class without saying his name privately in the back. It’s for him as much as it is for us. We carry on the tradition for us and for him at the same time.

Life through grieving, creating a company through my grief has been very challenging, interesting, beautiful because it’s a way to remember him as well. Wild to watch how putting everything into something because you really don’t have anything left to lose can somehow turn into something that’s blossomed so lovely.

The Philadelphia Food Scene and the Future of Midnight Pasta

Kirk Bachmann: Beautifully said. Thank you for sharing that with us. Really appreciate that.

You’ve mentioned Philadelphia a few times. We talked earlier about Eli and Jesse and other friends. Feel free to say hi to Eli and Jesse. Jesse will be on the show tomorrow. Eli was on earlier in the year. It’s a close-knit group. I’m curious what your feelings on the Philly food scene are [and] how it’s evolved, especially since the pandemic.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Yeah. I have very strong feelings about the Philadelphia food scene after living in New York City for ten years. I am obsessed with it here. Also, after traveling the country in a touring world and capacity, I was able to experience every major big city and eat the food pretty much everywhere. Philadelphia has the best food. It has the best Italian food. It is the most accessible price-wise. You can go into a James Beard award-winning chef’s restaurant, and it’s not going to take you two months to get into it. You can go and sit at the bar. It’s beautiful.

Like I briefly said earlier, the food scene here opened their arms to me through my grief and tragedy. [It] just held me, and it is still holding me. It has been beautiful. It’s a tight-knit community, but they are very, very welcoming to newcomers. It has just been absolutely lovely getting to know everybody here.

I was on Chef Eli’s podcast. I was at a party on his rooftop, and he said, “Let’s have a Midnight Pasta dinner party on my roof.”

I said, “Okay, Eli.” So we did it.

Kirk Bachmann: Let’s do it. Let’s do it.

Several months ago, my wife and I were at a local restaurant just sitting at the bar and just having a drink. I’m sitting here, and there’s a person on my left, and my wife is on my right. She whispers in my ear, “That’s Marc Vetri next to you.”

I’m like, “First of all, Honey, how do you know that’s Marc Vetri?” Sure enough! He overheard her.

Marc is really good friends with Bryan Dayton, who owns the restaurant, who has also been on the show. The funny thing is I’ve tried to get Mark on the show, but – Man! – he’s busy. Everywhere you turn, somebody’s connected with this amazing city.

I was going to ask, too. You’ve sort of touched on it, but Philadelphia, close-knit city, great food city. I love the thought that you said that you can walk into almost any place and sit at the bar. You don’t have to wait for a long line of reservations. That’s super important. How do you see Midnight Pasta, which is already making waves, growing alongside this Philadelphia food scene?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: I see it growing in many different ways. I have lots of plans that I have so much passion that I’m going to put behind and make Midnight Pasta a very big company. It will always, in my plans, be based in Philadelphia, whether I have my own space that becomes half kitchen CPG that I’m selling my butters and my sauces and my pasta itself. Then throwing parties out of. There’s that.

I have plans to take Midnight Pasta on tour to bring pasta parties around the country with my team. Once again, it’s what I did. I toured the country with Broadway touring shows. That’s how I met my husband. He was a stage hand. He packed it all up and brought it all back. I knew everything about that world, so why not?

Kirk Bachmann: I have chills. I’m calling you after this because I think Austin, Texas and Boulder, Colorado would be two, super, super cool places to do a Midnight Pasta pop-up, if you will. Let’s start planning. And Chicago! Oh, God. There’s so much to talk to you about. We have a studio in downtown Chicago where we film a lot of the content. Okay. The ideas are flowing.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Good.

Passion and Joy

Kirk Bachmann: I have two big questions left for you. Number one is: [Do you have] any advice [for] people who have followed your path, in school now, have great ideas, about finding their place in the industry and making their own mark? It’s a tough question because everyone is different. What advice would you give if you’re the mentor for someone who is looking up to you and saying, “I want to do what she did?”

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Find what makes you the most passionate. Do exactly that thing, and find a way to get paid for it.

Kirk Bachmann: She’s a businesswoman on top of it. I love it. I love it.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Find a way! But if you’re not doing what you love every single day? Through my grief, I have realized life is so fragile. What is the point of living this one beautiful life? No one knows whatever happens after, but what is the point if you’re not making yourself happy every single day. Find a way to put everything into that idea to make yourself happy and to make a sustainable life, whether it is just for you, for children, for your family. Whatever it may be, put everything you have into it.

And some days, you’re not going to sleep. I do a lot of fourteen-hour days, and Chef, I know you know that that’s the normal life. It won’t be like that forever.

Really just focus on that passion and that end goal and just put everything you have into it. I dream about pasta while I’m asleep. I’m never-ending.

Natalia Lepore Hagan’s Ultimate Dish

Kirk Bachmann:

Kirk Bachmann: Right? They say that sleep is really important to you, but I’m always so afraid I’m going to miss something. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to sleep for a couple of hours.” Really, really great advice. Really simple but genuine advice. I appreciate that. I know that our listeners will love that.

Before I let you go, the name of the show, as you know, is The Ultimate Dish. I can’t let you go – I think I know where you’re going to go with this – but Natalia, what is the ultimate dish?

Natalia Lepore Hagan: The ultimate dish in my life is my great-grandmother’s Sunday sauce that I would wake up and smell from my mother every Sunday with homemade spaghetti or gnocchi with meatballs and pork and sausage. But I think it’s more interesting than that because I think the idea of the ultimate dish is the thing that makes you the happiest that you ever can be when you take that bite. I care so much about the sense memories and taking a bite and being transported into a different time or a different place, going back to my grandfather feeling that way.

So my ultimate dish is that comforting, happiest place of waking up as a kid on Sunday morning and smelling meatballs frying and sauce cooking.

Kirk Bachmann: I can almost smell the aroma. It reminded me of the scene in “Ratatouille” when the critic…immediately tastes the ratatouille and – BOOM! – you’re back as a child.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: We all have that.

Kirk Bachmann: I love that you incorporated – I knew where you were going to go with that, but you also incorporated the emotion and the people around the table and stuff. Good answer. Good answer. A-plus. I’m not surprised.

Chef, can I call you Chef? Is that okay? Chef, I love that. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. I really appreciate your vulnerability, your humility, your passion, and your beauty. Thank you. Thank you so much for hanging with us for a little bit today.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Thank you. Escoffier is a huge, huge, huge, huge reason why I have my company today. I feel comfortable being called Chef and putting myself next to other amazing chefs in this industry. I’m very proud of the education that I got, and it is an honor to come back and talk about it and to have a little moment in the Escoffier world. I really, really loved it.

Kirk Bachmann: Well, it’s a big moment. Can I just tell you one thing that I have told students for thirty years? You are a chef when others call you a chef. So I’m proud to call you, Chef.

Natalia Lepore Hagan: Thank you.

Kirk Bachmann: Thank you for listening to the Ultimate Dish podcast, brought to you by Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts. Visit escoffier.edu/podcast to find any materials mentioned during the podcast, including notes, links and other resources. And if you can, please leave us a rating on Apple or Spotify, and subscribe to support our show. This helps us to reach more aspiring individuals ready to take the next step toward their dream careers. Thanks for listening.