Tess Whitehead pours cooked pasta into a paper bowl as a crowd of customers forms at Prima Apres on Nicholson Drive on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Prima Après is the new gourmet, fast casual, build-your-own pasta and pavlova restaurant that opened in July at 4225 Nicholson Drive in Baton Rouge. The restaurant is a marriage of Italian pasta and French meringue turned pavlova — the result of the marriage of Abney Harper, Prima Après co-owner and chef, and her husband, James Vitrano's careers.
The two were classmates in law school at Tulane and went on to marry other people and have three children each. They both worked in law and then left their separate practices to go into the restaurant business. Tess Whitehead squeezes vodka sauce into a bowl of radiatori pasta while making a customer’s order at Prima Apres on Nicholson Drive on Wednesday, July 31, 2024.
Vitrano worked on the executive/corporate side, while Harper worked as a chef. They've now been married for a year but life and business partners for six years. "We are a Brady Bunch of six kids," Harper said.
"Prima Après is the first child we've birthed together." In Italian, prima means first, and après means after in French. A meal at the restaurant should be as follows: First, pasta.
After, pavlova. The pasta is packed in white takeout containers (think those little boxes Chinese takeout comes in). Harper acknowledges that the concept for Prima Après is a little odd.
"It's kind of random, isn't it?" she said. However, the idea behind it comes from her culinary career in Georgia, where she owned Nancy by Abney. She traveled to Paris and Milan for work and would often spot the meringue clouds similar to pavlova.
"I came back and started doing the meringues in my restaurants, and they took off," Harper said. "They became our best-selling dessert." A look at the different pastas on display at Prima Apres on Nicholson Drive on Wednesday, July 31, 2024.
With the leftover egg yolks, she started making pasta. Soon enough, pasta became the best-selling entree. When Harper closed her restaurant in Georgia and moved to Louisiana, she and Vitrano wanted to bring something new to the state.
They wanted Prima Après to be a space that included fine dining offerings with casual counter service. The couple opened the first Prima Après location in Mandeville at 2180 N. Causeway Blvd.
, in March. In Baton Rouge, the space includes a long, white counter full of toppings, dried pasta, breadsticks and pasta to purchase. After ordering, customers can take their containers to-go or sit and stay awhile.
"We want you to linger — so the spaces are designed to be beautiful and comfortable in a really casual setting," Harper said. Tess Harper takes a customer’s order at Prima Apres on Nicholson Drive on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. As for the menu, customers can choose from six different types of pasta, sauce and toppings.
First, choose a pasta style: spaghetti, orecchiette, gemelli, radiatori, campanelle or mafalda. Then, pick a sauce: Bolognese, marinara, cacio e pepe, vodka, butter and Parmesan or buttery lemon. Finally, unlimited toppings like parmigiana reggiano, pecorino Romano, breadcrumbs, olives, red pepper flakes and crispy prosciutto.
On a recent sunny Wednesday morning in Baton Rouge, employee Tess Whitehead, who is also Abney Harper's daughter, greeted customers Russ and Debbie Babin, who picked their preferences from the pasta options. All of the ingredients in the restaurant are chef-driven and made from scratch in a commissary kitchen in Mandeville. The pasta, in particular, is formed from semolina flour made from durum wheat and water.
To make the pavlovas, the team bakes them in a low-temperature oven overnight. Harper says the meringues are very finicky to make because of the humidity in Louisiana, but the trick is to know when to stop mixing the batter. "There's a very delicate balance in learning how to mix them," she said.
"If you don't mix them long enough, they collapse when they're baking. But if you over mix, the batter breaks down and all of the sugar weeps out of the meringue." The key is to find the right stiffness.
Two orders of pavlova at Prima Apres on Nicholson Drive on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Harper says she enjoys the educational aspect of offering pavlova because a lot of customers question what it is. She explained that the dessert is a French meringue made from whipped egg whites and sugar, which is then baked until crispy.
At Prima Après, the pavlova is served with fresh whipped cream and vanilla bean ice cream. Customers can choose to keep the dessert plain or top it with English toffee, toasted coconut, toasted almonds, candied sprinkles, raspberry coulis, caramel sauce, chocolate syrup, shaved white or dark chocolate. Even with the addition of ice cream, the dessert is light, cool and, can provide just the right amount of sweet — or it can be taken to the next level and be downright decadent, depending on the chosen toppings.
For Russ Babin, the dining experience at Prima Après hit the spot. When he sat down at the end of the counter to enjoy his pasta, his wife called out: "Is it delicioso?" "Yes indeed," he replied..
