La Divina celebrates opening Saturday

A gelato, sandwich and coffee restaurant that made its debut in New Orleans in 2007 will officially celebrate its Baton Rouge opening this weekend. La Divina Italian Café (Map it!) hosts a grand opening event Saturday starting at 3 p.m., with live music, door prizes and samples from the café’s menu.

In the weeks leading up to the event, 225 talked to La Divina founder Carmelo Turillo and Baton Rouge owners Lance and Mary LeBlanc. Turillo grew up in Sicily, and his family moved back and forth between the states and Italy throughout his life. Though his family owns an Italian steakhouse in Pennsylvania, Turillo decided he wanted to go the gelato route.

“I wanted to do something that was authentically Italian, but also would appeal to an American palate,” he says. “It’s a hard sell—true Italian food—because people have this idea of what Italian food is, and it doesn’t match what it really is. We thought that if we did gelato, it would be a way of being true to an Italian way of eating.”

Turillo took professional classes on making gelato while living in Europe, and he was all set to open the first La Divina location in New Orleans. Then, Hurricane Katrina hit.

“The day after we unpacked our last box, Katrina hit,” he says. “It knocked us back a year.”

After the temporary break, Turillo and La Divina debuted on the New Orleans scene, garnering rave reviews from foodies like Alton Brown and local chefs like John Besh. With three successful locations in the Crescent City, Turillo started looking for another location.

Enter Lance and Mary LeBlanc, Baton Rougeans who were looking to open a new business venture. After three incognito visits to the New Orleans cafés, the LeBlancs started talking to Turillo about bringing it to Baton Rouge.

“It was perfect timing,” LeBlanc says. “For the past nine months, we have been conversing, looking at different locations. Once we saw this development here, we said, ‘This is it.’ It was a destiny thing. Things just started falling into place.”

La Divina has been open in the Acadian Village shopping center since before Thanksgiving. Among the offerings at the café are paninis, salads, coffee and gelato. The gelato features fresh, seasonal ingredients and a few Baton Rouge-centric flavors, such as Red Hot Red Stick cinnamon, Pink Flamingo Ping Pong red crčme soda, and Sazerac sorbetto.

La Divina’s hours are 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and 11 a.m.-7 p.m. on Sundays. For more information, call 223-1630 or click here.