March 28, 2025 – Chef Sébastien Giannini and his wife, Anina Belle Giannini, are a Washington D.C. culinary/hospitality power couple supporting each other’s entrepreneurial endeavor while raising two young children, their seven-year-old daughter and four-year-old son. Sébastien’s secret sauce for success is both literal and figurative. Born and raised in Toulon in southeastern France, Chef Sébastien watched and helped his grandmother make classic French sauces and dishes. As a teenager, his passion for cooking, and an injury that halted his boxing ambition, charted his path forward with his first stop at a dishwasher. He rose through the ranks at kitchens in France, including one year as executive chef at Chez Vincent et Nicolas in Cannes and 18 months as executive chef at La Vignette Haute in Auribeau sur Siagne where he met and fell in love with Anina Belle. Married in Nice in 2010, after living in Montreal for four years, in 2017 they moved to Washington. “It’s very international yet an American city that is small, different from New York City. We love that,” Chef Sébastien, Chaîne Maître Restaurateur from the Greater Washington, D.C. Bailliage, said to Chaîne during a March 18 telephone interview.
Sébastien and Anina Belle made their decision to move to the United States to support Anina Belle’s career after she was named director of sales and marketing for the Ritz Carlton Georgetown property. Sébastien accepted a position as executive chef at the St. Regis Hotel where he soon learned that many Americans were Francophiles, traveling often to France to experience the culture and cuisine in both large cities and small villages. “I can see the love of America for France, the Riviera. It’s always a new discovery. They are our best ambassadors for French food and wine,” he said.
As an avocation, in 2018, Anina Belle started Le Chef’s Wife, a blog originally intended to memorialize Sébastien’s ancestral recipes and his own creative twists to traditional French cooking for their daughter. At the top of the list of favorite dishes Sébastien remembers his grandmother making is Pieds et Paquets. “It’s like feet and packages,” he said. A traditional dish in Marseille and southeast France, it’s made with lamb feet and tripe.
Readers embraced Anina Belle’s beautiful website. Soon she was blogging about ways to simplify French cooking at home as Sébastien taught her to cook, perfect content in 2020 and 2021 when everyone became a home cook to some degree out of necessity. She is in the fourth year of her “Soup Sunday Challenge” in which she encourages her readers to make one pot of soup every week for four weeks. Through an email newsletter, she sends weekly tips and recipes. Who knew the secret to a tasty, terrific French onion soup is using chicken stock instead of beef stock!
In spring 2020, Sébastien was the executive chef at the Four Seasons when the pandemic upended the status quo worldwide. The Four Seasons never closed completely because of special guests staying at the hotel. Sébastien found himself alone in the kitchen handling everything for almost four months, including washing dishes again! Between guests and associates, he met the daily culinary needs for about 50 people, coming in at 6 a.m. to prep for breakfast and working until an 8:30 p.m. closing. “It was an unprecedented time. It was a good memory,” he said.
After the initial lockdown, life quickly returned to normal. “We became very, very busy. People wanted to come back,” he added.
With his reputation growing as an exquisite French chef, he was asked to become a private chef for an individual who also operated a charitable foundation. He accepted. From 2021 to 2024, Sébastien planned and prepared daily menus for his client and cuisine for foundation events when needed. He enjoyed the freedom he had personally to spend more time with his young children, especially after the 16-hour days in 2020, and professionally, to purchase the best ingredients during each season with an unwavering commitment to quality. “I cooked with an exceptional quality of ingredients. The best caviar, lobster or Wagyu beef. It was a pleasure to work with such ingredients every day, “ he said.
L’Avant-Garde restaurant in Washington, DC
Through friends, in 2023, Sébastien met Fady Saba, owner of L’Avant-Garde, a French restaurant with 32 tables and about 90 seats that opened in 2022 in Georgetown, when he was searching for a new chef. Fady asked Sébastien to become his business partner and executive chef. Sébastien took time before making the decision to return to the demanding schedule of operating a fine dining kitchen and new responsibilities as a business partner. He decided to accept the offer. “It was quite a decision. I don’t regret it,” he said, quickly giving credit to Anina Belle for making it work. “When you’re a chef, having a great partner is very important.”
After closing the restaurant for one month to create a new menu, L’Avant-Garde reopened on Valentine’s Day in 2024 with Chef Sébastien leading the kitchen. On the home page of the restaurant’s website, L’Avant-Garde is described as an “Ode to Paris – In the Heart of Washington, D.C.” offering a seasonal four-course, prix fixe menu in addition to traditional à la carte fare. Currently, the prix fixe menu features an all lobster four-course meal of Lobster Bouillabaisse, Lobster Salad, Lobster Thermidor and Authentic Creme Brûlée made from a recipe first served in the 17th century to the brother of King Louis XIV. American Francophiles will most certainly flock to L’Avant-Garde for that experience!
Anina Belle likewise spread her wings in the entrepreneurial world recently as principal and co-founder of Savoir Faire, a marketing, public relations and branding company with a focus on helping clients in the luxury hospitality industry.
Jacques Pépin Foundation 90/90 Dinner
On March 20, L’Avant-Garde hosted a Jacques Pépin Foundation (JPF) 90/90 Dinner to celebrate Chef Jacques Pépin’s 90th birthday. According to a JPF press release, the JPF was created in 2016 to honor Jacques’ generosity and passion for sharing his culinary knowledge. Its mission is to teach and inspire all people to cook. To fulfill their mission, a myriad of programs are offered that include providing hundreds of hours of free instructional videos through social media channels. In addition, JPF’s Community Kitchens Support program offers grants, cookbook libraries and other resources nationwide for workforce development, especially for individuals who are under-resourced.
Chef Pépin will turn 90 on Dec. 18, 2025. In its first ever nationwide fundraising campaign, the JPF is inviting chefs to host one of 90 star-studded dinners in 2025 to honor his 90th birthday, his 75-year culinary career, and his legacy.
At the March 20 L’Avant-Garde 90/90 JPF Dinner, Sébastien, who consider Jacques Pépin a mentor and inspiration, created a five-course menu – two appetizers, a main course, a cheese course, and a dessert – to showcase the elegance and artistry of French cuisine. Guests dined on lobster and chicken vol-au-vent with Armoricaine sauce; seared scallops, beurre blanc, cauliflower, leeks, and caviar; Duck a l’orange, candied apple; Truffle Brie, and Opera cake, gold leaf.
Three other restaurants in Washington are hosting JPF 90/90 Dinners in April and May. Those are:
• Centrolina on Sunday, April 27
• The Square on Monday, May 12
• Fiola on Tuesday, May 20
Additional information is available at the official JPF 90/90 campaign website.
Sébastien has led many kitchens in France, Canada and the United States. His operating philosophy was to work to create a legacy and then move on to the next challenge but not before thoroughly training and empowering his associates. “You leave your mark. You don’t need to stay there. You can evolve,” he said. Now he is focused on entrepreneurship. “I love the restaurant industry. I don’t ever see myself doing anything else.”
Even for an entry level position as a dishwasher, he advises people to stay focused on the task at hand. It is so fundamental and easily taken for granted but it is important for a restaurant to always have clean dishes and equipment, he explained. There is no room for error. Most important though is for staff to have a good attitude. He said kitchens have a specific ambiance – a noisy one. Pots, pans, and plates are clanking, fry pans are sizzling, and voices are raised to be heard above the cacophony. The staff member operating the dishwasher sees and hears it all. “When you’re young, it gives you the essence of the job. You see all departments. When you have a good attitude, you have all the tools you need to succeed,” Sébastien said.
For years in America, the farm-to-table movement has promoted healthier cooking using fresh ingredients. So many European chefs forged their careers formally as an apprentice to a chef – and informally with their relatives – who knew of no other way than to daily visit produce and meat/seafood markets to create their evening’s menu. Sébastien fondly recalls the flavors and smells of the fresh markets he visited with his grandmother. She taught him the difference between a zucchini and a cucumber so that when he found himself climbing the ladder in kitchens throughout France, he had a firm base of knowledge when the chef instructed him to go to the refrigerator to retrieve a certain fruit or vegetable. Knowledge equated to success. That’s only one component of becoming a great chef though.
“To be a great chef, you need a lot things. You have to have the passion, train associates properly, know products and produce, be passionate about the trends, the news, and be sure to learn something new every day. Keep an open mind,” Sébastien said.
That’s very powerful advice.
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Featured image above: From left: Chef Jacques Pépin and Chef Sébastien Giannini. (Photo: Courtesy of L’Avant-Garde)