I’m a big fan of Nginx myself, but there are pros and cons to both Nginx and Apache. There is a lot of buy in for using Nginx in the Laravel community. For instance, Laravel Forage uses it for apps deployed using their service. In the end, I’d recommend going with whichever you are most comfortable and experienced with. If you want to dig into that question a bit deeper, check out this article:

• Apache vs Nginx: Practical Considerations

Check out this tutorial for a walk through on getting a Laravel app up and running with Nginx and php-fpm:

• How to Install Laravel with an Nginx Web Server on Ubuntu 14.04